Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!crdgw1!barnett
From: barnett@grymoire.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: sendmail shock.  Bibliography?
Message-ID: <BARNETT.91Apr8094604@grymoire.crd.ge.com>
Date: 8 Apr 91 13:46:04 GMT
References: <1991Apr1.173622.12281@appmag.com>
	<1991Apr2.180215.1356@sci34hub.sci.com>
	<BARNETT.91Apr3153827@grymoire.crd.ge.com> <uf3Gv1qg1@cs.psu.edu>
	<14800@mcdphx.phx.mcd.mot.com>
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In-reply-to: kjj@varese.UUCP's message of 5 Apr 91 15:35:55 GMT

In article <14800@mcdphx.phx.mcd.mot.com> kjj@varese.UUCP (Kevin Johnson) writes:
   In what way is Ease 'not much better then sendmail'?

I may have comfused some people. 

If you think of sendmail.cf as  "machine language", then you can think
of Ease as an Assembly Language. You have more flexibility in
selecting variable and procedure names and have the ability to do conditional
"compiling", include files, etc.

I added several new enhancements to Ease that allow you to convert
almost any sendmail file into Ease, edit the file, and convert it back
into sendmail. The translation between Ease and raw cf files is
almost 1 to 1.

It is true that the standard sendmail distribution uses m4 as a
pre-processor. If you use m4, and remember all of the "$<whatever> " syntax,
Ease may not offer you much. It cannot provide more features than
sendmail, because it is merely a different language for the same
program.

It will generate a few warnings about unused classes, and Macros or
Classes used but not defined. Maybe some day I or someone else can add
more error checking.

I threw in a few extra "goodies" with the Ease distribution. I have a
shell script that grinds out the results from a list of addresses, so
I can test a sendmail.cf file before I install it. This does take a
long time to crunch thru each address, as I start up sendmail with the
debug option once for each address. A much more efficient method is to
use perl, start up sendmail once, and sent it each address one at a
time.

The real advantage of Ease is to those people who have to work with a
sendmail file, and the syntax of the sendmail.cf file makes their
knees shake. Ease just makes the learning curve easier.

--
Bruce G. Barnett	barnett@crdgw1.ge.com	uunet!crdgw1!barnett