Re: What's with negative scores?

process(_at_)qz(_dot_)little-neck(_dot_)ny(_dot_)us (Eli the Bearded) writes:
> This procmailrc:
>       VERBOSE=yes
>
>       :0
>       * $ `$HOME/jmdigest -`^0
>       * -3^0
>       { }
>
>       :0
>       { score=$= 
>         :0fw
>         | formail -I"JM-Score: $score"
>       }
>
> Gives me this log fragment:
>       procmail: Executing "/u1/home/eli/jmdigest,-"
>       procmail: [15207] Wed Jul 16 15:31:33 1997
>       procmail: Score:      -3      -3 ""
>       procmail: Score:      -3      -6 ""
>       procmail: Assigning "score=0"
>       procmail: Executing "formail,-IJM-Score: 0"
>
> Why is $score 0 and not -6?

To quote the procmailsc(5) manpage:

MISCELLANEOUS
     You can query the final score of all  the  conditions  on  a
     recipe  from  the environment variable $=.  This variable is
     set every time just after procmail has parsed all conditions
     on a recipe (even if the recipe is not being executed).

The last sentence is true even if there are no scoring conditions in
a recipe.

Philip Guenther