Stan Ryckman <stanr(_at_)sunspot(_dot_)tiac(_dot_)net> writes:
...
Well, procmail must be running per message in order to process the above
statement at all. At least it won't be able to clone all your greps
for more than one message at once, though.
But... *exactly* *when* does procmail read in the message;
the first time it "needs" it (presumably after things like the above
at the start of .procmailrc), or right away (in which case the
message has already consumed the memory it needs by the time the
LOCKFILE is set?
Procmail reads in the message before opening any rcfiles. About the
only case which would be helped by delaying it would be this very
case: an early assignment to LOCKFILE, before any recipes. Remember
that *any* recipe would require the message to be read in, as would an
assignment using backquotes, so you're kind of limited as to what you
could usefully do before reading it in. I don't think these few cases
really merit the complexity of being able to delay it.
Philip Guenther