Okay, I keep trying to learn procmail but the output of certain things
just doesn't seem to match what the man page says. Please forgive me
if I seem a little bit irreverent below. I'm just a beginner still.
For example, below is a simple variable assignment from an old script
by Tim <bodysurf(_at_)pobox(_dot_)com>:
FROM=`formail -rzxTo:`
It gives us, according to what I understand, the address in
the From-space line.
For the first option, formail's man page says:
-r Generate an auto-reply header. This will normally
throw away all the existing fields (except X-Loop:) in
the original message, fields you wish to preserve need
to be named using the -i option. If you use this
option in conjunction with -k, you can prevent the body
from being `escaped' by also specifying -b.
Well, why do we need an auto-reply header? We're just trying to
get the From-space address, right?
Secondly:
-z Ensure a space exists between field name and content.
Zap fields which contain only a space. Zap leading and
trailing whitespace on fields extracted with -x.
Hmmm. Well, that seem too useful for what we're doing and it sure
doesn't teach me much and since I know a dozen programming languages
(or so I did), I must must be too dense.
Lastly:
-x headerfield
Extract the contents of this headerfield from the
header, display it as a single line.
What? The To-colon line? Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought
we were trying to get the From-space line.
Perplexed,
Dave Robbins
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