Archive-name-to-be: mail/procmail-faq-pointer
URL: http://www.iki.fi/~era/procmail/
Last-modified: Fri Oct 17 18:51:14 1997 (EET DST)
Posting-frequency: Random at best
The Procmail Mini-FAQ and its companion Procmail Links page are
available at the following locations:
Procmail Mini-FAQ: <http://www.iki.fi/~era/procmail/mini-faq.html>
Procmail Links: <http://www.iki.fi/~era/procmail/links.html>
This informational message is being sent out as a very informal test.
Please let me know what you think about this.
My current plan is to send this out every 17 days and see how people
react. If nobody reacts in any way, I will probably continue to send
it out this way, and/or ultimately seek news.answers approval for this
notice.
(I've not been very successful at maintaining the intended posting
frequency. Things will hopefully improve when I finally get this fully
automated. Don't hold your breath [or point me to an inews that
doesn't crash when you give it a Supersedes: header])
I am living under the impression that the vast majority of Usenet is
not particularly fond of fetching FAQs from the news spool now that
there is a viable alternative. If you do not agree, and would rather
see that I post the entire FAQ instead of just this notice, please let
me know. I will probably attempt to have the FAQ proper archived at
rtfm.mit.edu once I iron out the final glitches in the text-only
rendering.
If you would like to receive the FAQ by electronic mail, send a
message with the Subject: header "send mini-faq.txt" to the address
<era+pr(_at_)iki(_dot_)fi>
The Links page is not very useful if you do not have WWW access.
There is thus presently no mechanism in place for fetching that by
electronic mail.
/* era */
I include a short (abridged) Contents section as well as a list of
changes since last time I announced the FAQ.
* What is Procmail? -- Description, availability, and installation
+ How can I run an arbitrary Perl or shell script on all or
selected incoming mail?
* How do I use wildcards in Procmail? Explain file locking, please.
... and other syntax issues, including:
+ What does the second colon in :0: mean?
+ What does "Couldn't determine implicit lockfile" mean?
+ Short example recipes sprinkled throughout the text
* Help, I get this error message ... -- Troubleshooting tips
Some highlights:
+ An example debugging .rc file
+ Known bugs, common gotchas, and funny quirks
... including, but not limited to:
o The regexp engine is not egrep compatible
o There is no ^FROM macro
o Backslash parsing is sometimes counter-intuitive
o Always include a SHELL= definition
+ Efficiency tips
+ Getting the thing to run in the first place
+ What goes in your .forward file
+ Why does formail fail when looking for duplicates?
+ What's this about "rescued" data from a filtering recipe?
+ Why won't biff work for my own folders?
* How do I ...? -- Running Procmail
+ ... match on the BCC header?
+ ... run Procmail on a file of messages?
+ ... trim down the From: field to just user(_at_)host?
+ ... know what EXITCODE to use?
+ ... extract MIME parts from messages?
+ ... implement a virtual domain?
+ ... write a "vacation" program? An autoresponder?
* Where can I learn more? -- A small links collection
The following change log details recent developments since this
announcement was last posted. The WWW version has a full change log
which goes further back.
Mini-FAQ:
date: 1997/10/17
Gave in; took out the <base> tag again
date: 1997/10/13
Lots of small edits. Hopefully made the text-only version ready
for prime time.
Preprocessor source is now over eight times the size of version
1.0 ...
date: 1997/10/02
Sigh. Don't blindly copy my .forward example
date: 1997/08/28
Bobby check (see <http://www.cast.org/bobby/>)
Links:
date: 1997/10/17
Alta Vista query URL:s changed to request text-only page
(easier to get graphics if you want them than the other way
around)
Local copies of man pages; links.html#manpages
Moved Jari's "best of" into the mailing list section
date: 1997/10/15
Jari renamed his page
date: 1997/10/14
Dan Smith's recipes (ftp)
Include listhelp.txt with help file from mailing list
([un]subscribe instructions!)
date: 1997/10/09
Spamtrap
--
Paparazzi of the Net: No matter what you do to protect your privacy,
they'll hunt you down and spam you. <http://www.iki.fi/~era/spam/>