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Procmail FAQ and Links pointer (pre-faq or pre-inf)

1998-01-17 02:39:15
Archive-name-to-be: mail/procmail-faq-pointer
URL:                http://www.iki.fi/~era/procmail/
Last-modified:      $Date: 1998/01/17 02:42:12 $
Posting-frequency:  Every 17 days
X-Clarification:    (17 is the most random number)
X-Obfuscation:      (Call it that instead if you will)


Subscription and unsubscription instructions for the Procmail-L
mailing list are included below.

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 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 words "send mini-faq.txt" (sans quotation marks) in
the Subject: header 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 */


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Abridged Table of Contents for the FAQ
======================================

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?
          + I subscribed to the Procmail-L mailing list earlier but
            haven't seen any messages for a while. Did the listserv
            crash?
     * How do I use wildcards in Procmail? Explain file locking, please.
       ... and other syntax issues, including:
          + How can I forward to many addresses?
          + What does the second colon in :0: mean?
          + What does "Couldn't determine implicit lockfile" mean?
          + What's this From_ header?
          + How can I test the value of a variable or argument?
          + Efficiency tips
          + 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 Memory handling with huge messages / on FreeBSD
               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
          + 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 right 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?
          + ... prevent my .forward from showing in bounces?
          + ... extract (or kill) MIME parts from messages?
          + ... implement a virtual domain?
          + ... write a "vacation" program? An autoresponder?
     * Where can I learn more? -- A small links collection


Changes to the FAQ since the previous announcement
==================================================

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: 1998/01/16
  
     Memory handling problems in the Bugs section
     
  date: 1998/01/15
  
     The other mailing list, run by Rhett 'Jonzy' Jones
     
  date: 1998/01/12
  
     A quick section about the From_ line
     
Links:
  
  date: 1998/01/16
  
     David Tamkin's sed script for getting a second copy of the headers
     
  date: 1998/01/15
  
     Annotated Rich & Famous section a little bit -- should hopefully
     attract more visitors
     
     Jari's library in the Procmail Applications section
     

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