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Re: Use procmail to split nntp messages

2001-10-31 22:02:02
At 20:12 2001-10-31 -0800, Harry Putnam wrote:
I've processed news or other one file per message format stuff with
procmail before by inserting a "From " line at the top and feeding to
procmail like a spool.  It works and is handy.

However I've wondered a time or two if there is something internal in
procmail that can be easily hacked to make it accept a regexp for
first line of message identification.

Hmm, perhaps you're confusing procmail and formail. procmail operates on individual messages, not mail spools. If you have a mailbox with multiple messages in it, you need to use formail to "burst" these into individual messages to pass to procmail, one message at a time.

If you are emitting the news messages on a per-message basis (say, by launching procmail from your newsreader for selected messages), just passing them through formail should automatically add the From line. If you wanted to pass them directly to procmail, procmail shouldn't care, though if your delivery rules are putting them into a mailbox format, the "From " separator will be necessary.

trn has an option (in fact, it automatically prompts when creating a new file) to save in either mailbox or a standard news format. Other newsreaders probably have similar options, and if yours doesn't, perhaps you should consider switching to one that does... The mailbox format INCLUDES the necessary "From " header automatically. trn's non-mailbox format includes an "article " header above the Path: header, and would probably mess with your day anyway. I suggest you check what save options are available in your newsreader.

Since formail and procmail are distributed as source, if you really want to change your copy of formail (perhaps rename it to "fornews" or "newsmail" ?) to burst an alternate format, it's all right there. This is only necessary if you're going to process a mailbox-like file consisting of unfixed nntp messages -- if you intend to pipe individual messages through formail anyway, the fixup it'll perform anyway will resolve your problem...

Maybe something that would include the NNTP header:
"Path: "
A line that occurs at the top of nntp messages.

And even if there is a way for procmail to process the one file per
message format without me having to spoolify it.

I don't follow your "spoolify" bit here. What exactly are you doing to accomplish this now?

---
 Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering

 Procmail disclaimer: <http://www.professional.org/procmail/disclaimer.html>
 Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies.  I'll get my copy from the list.

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