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Filters - an explanation

2001-04-23 16:36:53
Alright, since I started a veritable storm of replies on this list to
some questions, I want to give you back a pragmatic definition of
precisely what the "f" flag does. I haven't seen it explained _exactly_
this way, so maybe it will help someone.

First off, forget the word "filter" since it obviously means different
things to different people, and we're only really interested in what
this means to procmail.

From a pragmatic standpoint, the "f" flag in procmail recipes does two
things:

1) It captures whatever is output from your action line.

2) It takes the output and continues to compare that message to all
subsequent procmail recipes, until the message is delivered, even if
delivery occurs by default at the end of the .procmailrc file.

This conclusion is arrived at from experimentation, which is why it's a
"pragmatic" definition. Someone else may have explained this same thing
this way before, but if so, I haven't found it. If someone objects to
this or sees something incorrect about it, please correct me. Otherwise,
this is how it _really_ works.

(And thanks to all who explained things.)

Paul

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