Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!spool.mu.edu!uunet!lotus!lotus!johnr
From: johnr@lotus.lotus.com (John Rouillard)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Filter question
Keywords: Filter
Message-ID: <1991May24.002324.3138@lotus.com>
Date: 24 May 91 00:23:24 GMT
Article-I.D.: lotus.1991May24.002324.3138
References: <225835.4481@timbuk.cray.com>
Sender: news@lotus.com
Reply-To: johnr@lotus.lotus.com (John Rouillard)
Organization: Lotus Development Corp.
Lines: 70

In article <225835.4481@timbuk.cray.com>, anoosh@cray.com (Anoosh Mostaghimi) writes:
|> 
|> I need a set of filter rule(s) or a clever "execute" to be able 
|> to based on a given "To:" field of a mailing list to *bounce* a 
|> copy of that email to several other folks and still keep a copy 
|> of that email in my /usr/spool/mail.

This won't *bounce* the message, filter only handles forwarding as far as I can
tell, but if forwarding is good enough - try something along the following lines:

RULE 1:
  if ( To = "FTest" and from = "johnr") then
        save "/usr/spool/mail/fooble"
 
RULE 2:
  if ( To = "FTest" ) then
        forward "frisbele@einstein myself@einstein others@anywhere.usa.com"

The first time through, the message isn't from you, so rule 2 is invoked sending
the mail to the interested parties, including yourself.  The next time through,
you did send (forward) the message so rule 1 is invoked, and the message is
saved.  This works OK unless you originated the message, in which case it only
gets saved not forwarded.  Rule 1 MUST come before rule 2 otherwise, you will
never save the message, and will create an inifinite loop of forwarded messages.

I don't acutally use the configuration above, I use the subject line instead of
the to line, and save it in a file that isn't my spool file.

Obviously, this won't work if the message is bounced, since rule 1 wouldn't be
executed.

If you had a reflector that would bounce the message, then a simple shell script
that has:

     cat - > /tmp/$$

as its first line to capture the message, and then proceeds with:

    cat /tmp/$$ >> /usr/spool/mail/fooble
    boing azzy, bazzy, grumpy@any < /tmp/$$

where boing is your mail bouncer.  I am not sure if you could write a script for
elm and submit it by redirecting stdin, but that may work, to create a mail
bouncer.  Just invoke elm as "elm -f /tmp/$$" and the input script would be along
the lines of:

	b<to_names_here>y




On more or less the same note, does anybody have patches that allow multiple
actions to be tagged to the same pattern.  Then this would be a simple case of 

   if (subject = "Forward Test" ) then do
          save "/usr/spool/mail/fooble"
          forward "frisbee@einstein others@anywhere.usa.com"
	  execute boing to@these.people etc@you.get.the.idea
	  done

or something like this. It is really useful to be able to save a message and run it through a program as well.  Ideally a bounce primative would work well.


On a completely different note:
  Why does filter not like strings with "_"'s in them.  It seems to use '_'
  as a delimiter of some sort. I fixed this in my filter by using ^A instead of
  '_' as a delimeter, but I don't think that is a good solution.


		-- John