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procmailrc(5)                                                    procmailrc(5)




NAME

       procmailrc - procmail rcfile


SYNOPSIS

       $HOME/.procmailrc


DESCRIPTION

       For a quick start, see NOTES at the end of the procmail(1) man page.

       The  rcfile  can  contain a mixture of environment variable assignments
       (some of which have special meanings to  procmail),  and  recipes.   In
       their  most  simple appearance, the recipes are simply one line regular
       expressions that are searched for in the header of the  arriving  mail.
       The  first  recipe that matches is used to determine where the mail has
       to go (usually a file).  If processing falls off the end of the rcfile,
       procmail will deliver the mail to $DEFAULT.

       There  are two kinds of recipes: delivering and non-delivering recipes.
       If a delivering recipe is found to match, procmail considers  the  mail
       (you  guessed  it) delivered and will cease processing the rcfile after
       having successfully executed the action line of the recipe.  If a  non-
       delivering recipe is found to match, processing of the rcfile will con-
       tinue after the action line of this recipe has been executed.

       Delivering recipes are those that cause header and/or body of the  mail
       to  be:  written  into  a file, absorbed by a program or forwarded to a
       mailaddress.

       Non-delivering recipes are: those that cause the output of a program or
       filter  to  be  captured back by procmail or those that start a nesting
       block.

       You can tell procmail to treat a delivering recipe as if it were a non-
       delivering  recipe  by  specifying the `c' flag on such a recipe.  This
       will make procmail generate a carbon copy of the mail by delivering  it
       to this recipe, yet continue processing the rcfile.

       By  using  any  number  of  recipes you can presort your mail extremely
       straightforward into several mailfolders.  Bear in mind though that the
       mail  can arrive concurrently in these mailfolders (if several procmail
       programs happen to run at the same time, not unlikely if a lot of  mail
       arrives).   To  make sure this does not result in a mess, proper use of
       lockfiles is highly recommended.

       The environment variable assignments and recipes can be  freely  inter-
       mixed  in the rcfile. If any environment variable has a special meaning
       to procmail, it will be used appropriately  the  moment  it  is  parsed
       (i.e., you can change the current directory whenever you want by speci-
       fying a new MAILDIR, switch lockfiles by  specifying  a  new  LOCKFILE,
       change  the umask at any time, etc., the possibilities are endless :-).

       The assignments and substitutions of these  environment  variables  are
       handled  exactly  like  in sh(1) (that includes all possible quotes and
       escapes), with the added bonus that blanks  around  the  '='  sign  are
       ignored and that, if an environment variable appears without a trailing
       '=', it will be removed from the environment.   Any  program  in  back-
       quotes started by procmail will have the entire mail at its stdin.


   Comments
       A  word  beginning with # and all the following characters up to a NEW-
       LINE are ignored.  This does not apply to condition lines, which cannot
       be commented.

   Recipes
       A  line  starting with ':' marks the beginning of a recipe.  It has the
       following format:

              :0 [flags] [ : [locallockfile] ]
              <zero or more conditions (one per line)>
              <exactly one action line>

       Conditions start with a leading `*', everything after that character is
       passed  on  to  the  internal  egrep  literally, except for leading and
       trailing whitespace.  These regular expressions are completely compati-
       ble  to  the  normal  egrep(1)  extended regular expressions.  See also
       Extended regular expressions.

       Conditions are anded; if there are no conditions  the  result  will  be
       true by default.

       Flags can be any of the following:

       H    Egrep the header (default).

       B    Egrep the body.

       D    Tell  the  internal  egrep  to distinguish between upper and lower
            case (contrary to the default which is to ignore case).

       A    This recipe will not be executed unless the conditions on the last
            preceding  recipe (on the current block-nesting level) without the
            `A' or `a' flag matched as well.  This allows you to chain actions
            that depend on a common condition.

       a    Has  the  same meaning as the `A' flag, with the additional condi-
            tion that the immediately preceding recipe must have been success-
            fully completed before this recipe is executed.

       E    This  recipe only executes if the immediately preceding recipe was
            not executed.  Execution of this recipe also disables any  immedi-
            ately  following  recipes  with  the 'E' flag.  This allows you to
            specify `else if' actions.

       e    This recipe only executes  if  the  immediately  preceding  recipe
            failed  (i.e.,  the  action line was attempted, but resulted in an
            error).

       h    Feed the header to the pipe, file or mail destination (default).

       b    Feed the body to the pipe, file or mail destination (default).

       f    Consider the pipe as a filter.

       c    Generate a carbon copy of this mail.  This  only  makes  sense  on
            delivering  recipes.  The only non-delivering recipe this flag has
            an effect on is on a nesting block, in order to generate a  carbon
            copy  this will clone the running procmail process (lockfiles will
            not be inherited), whereby the clone will proceed as usual and the
            parent will jump across the block.

       w    Wait  for  the  filter or program to finish and check its exitcode
            (normally ignored); if the filter is unsuccessful, then  the  text
            will not have been filtered.

       W    Has  the same meaning as the `w' flag, but will suppress any `Pro-
            gram failure' message.

       i    Ignore any write errors on this recipe (i.e., usually  due  to  an
            early closed pipe).

       r    Raw  mode,  do not try to ensure the mail ends with an empty line,
            write it out as is.

       There are some special conditions you can use  that  are  not  straight
       regular expressions.  To select them, the condition must start with:

       !    Invert the condition.

       $    Evaluate  the  remainder of this condition according to sh(1) sub-
            stitution rules inside double  quotes,  skip  leading  whitespace,
            then reparse it.

       ?    Use the exitcode of the specified program.

       <    Check  if  the total length of the mail is shorter than the speci-
            fied (in decimal) number of bytes.

       >    Analogous to '<'.

       variablename ??
            Match the remainder of this condition against the  value  of  this
            environment  variable (which cannot be a pseudo variable).  A spe-
            cial case is if variablename is equal to `B', `H', `HB'  or  `BH';
            this  merely overrides the default header/body search area defined
            by the initial flags on this recipe.

       \    To quote any of the above at the start of the line.

   Local lockfile
       If you put a second (trailing) ':' on the first recipe line, then proc-
       mail  will use a locallockfile (for this recipe only).  You can option-
       ally specify the locallockfile to use; if you don't  however,  procmail
       will  use the destination filename (or the filename following the first
       '>>') and will append $LOCKEXT to it.

   Recipe action line
       The action line can start with the following characters:

       !      Forwards to all the specified mail addresses.

       |      Starts the specified program, possibly in $SHELL if any  of  the
              characters  $SHELLMETAS are spotted.  You can optionally prepend
              this pipe symbol with variable=, which will cause stdout of  the
              program  to  be  captured  in the environment variable (procmail
              will not terminate processing the rcfile at this point).  If you
              specify  just  this pipe symbol, without any program, then proc-
              mail will pipe the mail to stdout.

       {      Followed by at least one space, tab or  newline  will  mark  the
              start  of  a nesting block.  Everything up till the next closing
              brace will depend on the conditions specified for  this  recipe.
              Unlimited nesting is permitted.  The closing brace exists merely
              to delimit the block, it will not cause procmail to terminate in
              any  way.  If the end of a block is reached processing will con-
              tinue as usual after the block.  On a nesting block,  the  flags
              `H'  and `B' only affect the conditions leading up to the block,
              the flags `h' and `b' have no effect whatsoever.

       Anything else will be taken as a mailbox name (either a filename  or  a
       directory,   absolute   or  relative  to  the  current  directory  (see
       MAILDIR)).  If it is a (possibly yet nonexistent)  filename,  the  mail
       will be appended to it.

       If  it  is  a directory, the mail will be delivered to a newly created,
       guaranteed to be unique file named $MSGPREFIX* in the specified  direc-
       tory.   If  the  mailbox name ends in "/.", then this directory is pre-
       sumed to be an MH folder; i.e., procmail will use the  next  number  it
       finds  available.  If the mailbox name ends in "/", then this directory
       is presumed to be a maildir folder; i.e.,  procmail  will  deliver  the
       message  to  a  file  in a subdirectory named "tmp" and rename it to be
       inside a subdirectory named "new".  If the mailbox is specified  to  be
       an  MH  folder  or  maildir  folder, procmail will create the necessary
       directories if they don't exist, rather than treat  the  mailbox  as  a
       non-existent filename.  When procmail is delivering to directories, you
       can specify multiple directories to deliver to  (procmail  will  do  so
       utilising hardlinks).

   Environment variable defaults
       LOGNAME, HOME and SHELL
                             Your (the recipient's) defaults

       PATH                  $HOME/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
                             :/usr/X11/bin (Except during the processing of an
                             /etc/procmailrc file, when it will be set to
                             `/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin'.)

       SHELLMETAS            &|<>~;?*[

       SHELLFLAGS            -c

       ORGMAIL               /var/mail/$LOGNAME
                             (Unless -m has been specified, in which  case  it
                             is unset)

       MAILDIR               $HOME
                             (Unless the name of the first successfully opened
                             rcfile starts with `./' or if -m has been  speci-
                             fied, in which case it defaults to `.')

       DEFAULT               $ORGMAIL

       MSGPREFIX             msg.

       SENDMAIL              /usr/sbin/sendmail

       SENDMAILFLAGS         -oi

       HOST                  The current hostname

       COMSAT                no
                             (If an rcfile is specified on the command line)

       PROCMAIL_VERSION      3.22

       LOCKEXT               .lock

       Other cleared or preset environment variables are IFS, ENV and PWD.

       For  security reasons, upon startup procmail will wipe out all environ-
       ment variables that are suspected of modifying the behavior of the run-
       time linker.

   Environment
       Before  you get lost in the multitude of environment variables, keep in
       mind that all of them have reasonable defaults.

       MAILDIR     Current directory while procmail is executing  (that  means
                   that all paths are relative to $MAILDIR).

       DEFAULT     Default  mailbox file (if not told otherwise, procmail will
                   dump mail in this mailbox).   Procmail  will  automatically
                   use  $DEFAULT$LOCKEXT  as lockfile prior to writing to this
                   mailbox.  You do not need to set this  variable,  since  it
                   already points to the standard system mailbox.

       LOGFILE     This  file  will  also contain any error or diagnostic mes-
                   sages from procmail (normally none :-) or  any  other  pro-
                   grams  started by procmail.  If this file is not specified,
                   any diagnostics or error messages will be  mailed  back  to
                   the sender.  See also LOGABSTRACT.

       VERBOSE     You  can turn on extended diagnostics by setting this vari-
                   able to `yes' or `on', to turn it off again set it to  `no'
                   or `off'.

       LOGABSTRACT Just  before  procmail  exits  it  logs  an abstract of the
                   delivered message in $LOGFILE showing the `From ' and `Sub-
                   ject:' fields of the header, what folder it finally went to
                   and how long (in bytes) the message was.  By  setting  this
                   variable  to  `no',  generation  of  this  abstract is sup-
                   pressed.  If you set it to  `all',  procmail  will  log  an
                   abstract  for  every  successful  delivering recipe it pro-
                   cesses.

       LOG         Anything assigned to this  variable  will  be  appended  to
                   $LOGFILE.

       ORGMAIL     Usually  the  system  mailbox  (ORiGinal MAILbox).  If, for
                   some obscure reason (like `filesystem full') the mail could
                   not  be  delivered,  then  this  mailbox  will  be the last
                   resort.  If procmail fails to save the mail in here  (deep,
                   deep  trouble  :-),  then  the mail will bounce back to the
                   sender.

       LOCKFILE    Global semaphore file.  If this file already exists,  proc-
                   mail  will  wait  until  it has gone before proceeding, and
                   will create it  itself  (cleaning  it  up  when  ready,  of
                   course).  If more than one lockfile are specified, then the
                   previous one will be removed before trying  to  create  the
                   new  one.   The  use  of  a global lockfile is discouraged,
                   whenever possible  use  locallockfiles  (on  a  per  recipe
                   basis) instead.

       LOCKEXT     Default extension that is appended to a destination file to
                   determine what local lockfile to use (only if turned on, on
                   a per-recipe basis).

       LOCKSLEEP   Number  of seconds procmail will sleep before retrying on a
                   lockfile (if it already  existed);  if  not  specified,  it
                   defaults to 8 seconds.

       LOCKTIMEOUT Number of seconds that have to have passed since a lockfile
                   was last modified/created before procmail decides that this
                   must  be  an  erroneously  leftover  lockfile  that  can be
                   removed by force now.  If zero, then  no  timeout  will  be
                   used  and  procmail will wait forever until the lockfile is
                   removed; if not specified, it  defaults  to  1024  seconds.
                   This  variable  is  useful to prevent indefinite hangups of
                   sendmail/procmail.  Procmail is immune to clock skew across
                   machines.

       TIMEOUT     Number  of seconds that have to have passed before procmail
                   decides that some child it started must  be  hanging.   The
                   offending  program  will  receive  a  TERMINATE signal from
                   procmail, and processing of the rcfile will  continue.   If
                   zero,  then  no timeout will be used and procmail will wait
                   forever until the child has terminated; if  not  specified,
                   it defaults to 960 seconds.

       MSGPREFIX   Filename prefix that is used when delivering to a directory
                   (not used when delivering to a maildir or an MH directory).

       HOST        If  this  is not the hostname of the machine, processing of
                   the current rcfile will immediately cease. If other rcfiles
                   were  specified  on  the command line, processing will con-
                   tinue with the next one.  If all rcfiles are exhausted, the
                   program  will  terminate,  but  will  not generate an error
                   (i.e., to the mailer it will seem that the  mail  has  been
                   delivered).

       UMASK       The name says it all (if it doesn't, then forget about this
                   one :-).  Anything assigned to UMASK is taken as  an  octal
                   number.   If  not specified, the umask defaults to 077.  If
                   the umask permits o+x, all the mailboxes procmail  delivers
                   to  directly  will receive an o+x mode change.  This can be
                   used to check if new mail arrived.

       SHELLMETAS  If any of the characters in SHELLMETAS appears in the  line
                   specifying  a  filter  or  program, the line will be fed to
                   $SHELL instead of being executed directly.

       SHELLFLAGS  Any invocation of $SHELL will be like:
                   "$SHELL" "$SHELLFLAGS" "$*";

       SENDMAIL    If you're not using the  forwarding  facility  don't  worry
                   about  this  one.  It specifies the program being called to
                   forward any mail.
                   It gets invoked as: "$SENDMAIL" $SENDMAILFLAGS "$@";

       NORESRETRY  Number of retries that are to be made if any `process table
                   full',  `file  table full', `out of memory' or `out of swap
                   space' error should occur.  If  this  number  is  negative,
                   then procmail will retry indefinitely; if not specified, it
                   defaults to 4 times.  The retries  occur  with  a  $SUSPEND
                   second  interval.   The  idea behind this is that if, e.g.,
                   the swap space has been exhausted or the process  table  is
                   full,  usually  several  other  programs will either detect
                   this as well and abort or crash 8-), thereby freeing  valu-
                   able resources for procmail.

       SUSPEND     Number  of  seconds  that  procmail will pause if it has to
                   wait for something that is currently  unavailable  (memory,
                   fork,  etc.);  if not specified, it will default to 16 sec-
                   onds.  See also: LOCKSLEEP.

       LINEBUF     Length of the internal line buffers, cannot be set  smaller
                   than 128.  All lines read from the rcfile should not exceed
                   $LINEBUF characters before and  after  expansion.   If  not
                   specified,  it  defaults  to  2048.  This limit, of course,
                   does not apply to the mail itself, which can have arbitrary
                   line  lengths,  or  could be a binary file for that matter.
                   See also PROCMAIL_OVERFLOW.

       DELIVERED   If set to `yes' procmail will pretend (to the  mail  agent)
                   the  mail  has been delivered.  If mail cannot be delivered
                   after having met this assignment (set to `yes'),  the  mail
                   will be lost (i.e., it will not bounce).

       TRAP        When  procmail terminates of its own accord and not because
                   it received a signal, it will execute the contents of  this
                   variable.   A copy of the mail can be read from stdin.  Any
                   output produced by this command will be appended  to  $LOG-
                   FILE.   Possible  uses  for  TRAP are: removal of temporary
                   files, logging customised abstracts, etc.  See  also  EXIT-
                   CODE and LOGABSTRACT.

       EXITCODE    By  default, procmail returns an exitcode of zero (success)
                   if it successfully delivered the message  or  if  the  HOST
                   variable  was  misset and there were no more rcfiles on the
                   command line; otherwise it returns failure.   Before  doing
                   so, procmail examines the value of this variable.  If it is
                   set to a positive numeric value, procmail will instead  use
                   that  value  as  its exitcode.  If this variable is set but
                   empty and TRAP is set, procmail will set  the  exitcode  to
                   whatever the TRAP program returns.  If this variable is not
                   set, procmail will set it shortly  before  calling  up  the
                   TRAP program.

       LASTFOLDER  This  variable  is  assigned  to by procmail whenever it is
                   delivering to a folder or program.  It always contains  the
                   name  of  the last file (or program) procmail delivered to.
                   If the last  delivery  was  to  several  directory  folders
                   together then $LASTFOLDER will contain the hardlinked file-
                   names as a space separated list.

       MATCH       This variable is assigned to by  procmail  whenever  it  is
                   told  to  extract  text from a matching regular expression.
                   It will contain all text matching  the  regular  expression
                   past the `\/' token.

       SHIFT       Assigning  a  positive  value to this variable has the same
                   effect as the `shift' command in sh(1).   This  command  is
                   most  useful  to extract extra arguments passed to procmail
                   when acting as a generic mailfilter.

       INCLUDERC   Names an rcfile (relative to the current  directory)  which
                   will  be  included  here  as if it were part of the current
                   rcfile.  Nesting is permitted and only limited  by  systems
                   resources (memory and file descriptors).  As no checking is
                   done on the permissions or ownership of the  rcfile,  users
                   of  INCLUDERC should make sure that only trusted users have
                   write access to the included rcfile or the directory it  is
                   in.   Command line assignments to INCLUDERC have no effect.

       SWITCHRC    Names an rcfile (relative  to  the  current  directory)  to
                   which  processing  will  be  switched.  If the named rcfile
                   doesn't exist or is not a normal file or /dev/null then  an
                   error  will  be  logged and processing will continue in the
                   current  rcfile.   Otherwise,  processing  of  the  current
                   rcfile  will  be  aborted  and  the  named  rcfile started.
                   Unsetting SWITCHRC aborts processing of the current  rcfile
                   as  if  it had ended at the assignment.  As with INCLUDERC,
                   no checking is done on the permissions or ownership of  the
                   rcfile and command line assignments have no effect.

       PROCMAIL_VERSION
                   The version number of the running procmail binary.

       PROCMAIL_OVERFLOW
                   This  variable will be set to a non-empty value if procmail
                   detects a buffer overflow.  See the BUGS section below  for
                   other details of operation when overflow occurs.

       COMSAT      Comsat(8)/biff(1)  notification is on by default, it can be
                   turned off by setting this variable to `no'.  Alternatively
                   the  biff-service can be customised by setting it to either
                   `service@', `@hostname', or `service@hostname'.   When  not
                   specified it defaults to biff@localhost.

       DROPPRIVS   If  set to `yes' procmail will drop all privileges it might
                   have had (suid or sgid).  This is only useful if  you  want
                   to  guarantee  that  the bottom half of the /etc/procmailrc
                   file is executed on behalf of the recipient.

   Extended regular expressions
       The following tokens are known to both the procmail internal egrep  and
       the  standard  egrep(1) (beware that some egrep implementations include
       other non-standard extensions):

       ^         Start of a line.

       $         End of a line.

       .         Any character except a newline.

       a*        Any sequence of zero or more a's.

       a+        Any sequence of one or more a's.

       a?        Either zero or one a.

       [^-a-d]   Any character which is not either a dash, a, b, c, d or  new-
                 line.

       de|abc    Either the sequence `de' or `abc'.

       (abc)*    Zero or more times the sequence `abc'.

       \.        Matches a single dot; use \ to quote any of the magic charac-
                 ters to get rid of their special meaning.  See also $\  vari-
                 able substitution.

       These  were  only  samples,  of course, any more complex combination is
       valid as well.

       The following token meanings are special procmail extensions:

       ^ or $    Match a newline (for multiline matches).

       ^^        Anchor the expression at the very start of the  search  area,
                 or  if encountered at the end of the expression, anchor it at
                 the very end of the search area.

       \< or \>  Match the character before or after a word.  They are  merely
                 a shorthand for `[^a-zA-Z0-9_]', but can also match newlines.
                 Since they match actual characters, they are only suitable to
                 delimit words, not to delimit inter-word space.

       \/        Splits  the expression in two parts.  Everything matching the
                 right part will be assigned to the  MATCH  environment  vari-
                 able.


EXAMPLES

       Look in the procmailex(5) man page.


CAVEATS

       Continued  lines in an action line that specifies a program always have
       to end in a backslash, even if the underlying shell would not  need  or
       want  the  backslash  to indicate continuation.  This is due to the two
       pass parsing process needed (first procmail, then the  shell  (or  not,
       depending on SHELLMETAS)).

       Don't  put  comments  on  the  regular  expression condition lines in a
       recipe, these lines are fed to the internal egrep literally (except for
       continuation backslashes at the end of a line).

       Leading  whitespace  on continued regular expression condition lines is
       usually ignored (so that they can be indented), but  not  on  continued
       condition  lines that are evaluated according to the sh(1) substitution
       rules inside double quotes.

       Watch out for deadlocks when doing  unhealthy  things  like  forwarding
       mail  to  your  own  account.  Deadlocks can be broken by proper use of
       LOCKTIMEOUT.

       Any default values that procmail has  for  some  environment  variables
       will always override the ones that were already defined.  If you really
       want to override the defaults, you either  have  to  put  them  in  the
       rcfile or on the command line as arguments.

       The  /etc/procmailrc  file  cannot change the PATH setting seen by user
       rcfiles as the value is reset when  procmail  finishes  the  /etc/proc-
       mailrc  file.   While  future  enhancements  are expected in this area,
       recompiling procmail with the desired value is currently the only  cor-
       rect solution.

       Environment  variables set inside the shell-interpreted-`|' action part
       of a recipe will not retain their value after the recipe  has  finished
       since  they  are set in a subshell of procmail.  To make sure the value
       of an environment variable is retained you have to put  the  assignment
       to the variable before the leading `|' of a recipe, so that it can cap-
       ture stdout of the program.

       If you specify only a `h' or a `b' flag on a delivering recipe, and the
       recipe  matches, then, unless the `c' flag is present as well, the body
       respectively the header of the mail will be silently lost.


SEE ALSO

       procmail(1), procmailsc(5), procmailex(5), sh(1), csh(1), mail(1),
       mailx(1), binmail(1), uucp(1), aliases(5), sendmail(8), egrep(1),
       regexp(5), grep(1), biff(1), comsat(8), lockfile(1), formail(1)


BUGS

       The only substitutions of environment variables that can be handled  by
       procmail   itself  are  of  the  type  $name,  ${name},  ${name:-text},
       ${name:+text}, ${name-text}, ${name+text}, $\name, $#, $n, $$, $?,  $_,
       $- and $=; whereby $\name will be substituted by the all-magic-regular-
       expression-characters-disarmed equivalent of $name, $_ by the  name  of
       the  current rcfile, $- by $LASTFOLDER and $= will contain the score of
       the last recipe.  Furthermore, the result of $\name  substitution  will
       never  be  split on whitespace.  When the -a or -m options are used, $#
       will expand to the number of  arguments  so  specified  and  "$@"  (the
       quotes  are required) will expand to the specified arguments.  However,
       "$@" will only be expanded when used in the argument list to a program,
       and then only one such occurrence will be expanded.

       Unquoted  variable expansions performed by procmail are always split on
       space, tab, and newline characters; the IFS variable is not used inter-
       nally.

       Procmail does not support the expansion of `~'.

       A  line  buffer  of length $LINEBUF is used when processing the rcfile,
       any expansions that don't fit within this limit will be  truncated  and
       PROCMAIL_OVERFLOW  will be set.  If the overflowing line is a condition
       or an action line, then it will be considered failed and procmail  will
       continue  processing.   If  it is a variable assignment or recipe start
       line then procmail will abort the entire rcfile.

       If the global lockfile has a relative path, and the  current  directory
       is not the same as when the global lockfile was created, then the glob-
       al lockfile will not be removed if procmail exits at that point  (reme-
       dy: use absolute paths to specify global lockfiles).

       If  an  rcfile  has a relative path and when the rcfile is first opened
       MAILDIR contains a relative path, and if at one point procmail  is  in-
       structed  to  clone  itself and the current directory has changed since
       the rcfile was opened, then procmail will not be able to  clone  itself
       (remedy:  use  an  absolute  path  to reference the rcfile or make sure
       MAILDIR contains an absolute path as the rcfile is opened).

       A locallockfile on the recipe that marks the  start  of  a  non-forking
       nested block does not work as expected.

       When  capturing  stdout from a recipe into an environment variable, ex-
       actly one trailing newline will be stripped.

       Some non-optimal and non-obvious regexps set MATCH to an incorrect val-
       ue.  The regexp can be made to work by removing one or more unneeded


MISCELLANEOUS

       If the regular expression contains `^TO_' it will be substituted by
       `(^((Original-)?(Resent-)?(To|Cc|Bcc)|(X-Envelope
       |Apparently(-Resent)?)-To):(.*[^-a-zA-Z0-9_.])?)', which should catch
       all destination specifications containing a specific address.

       If the regular expression contains `^TO' it will be substituted by
       `(^((Original-)?(Resent-)?(To|Cc|Bcc)|(X-Envelope
       |Apparently(-Resent)?)-To):(.*[^a-zA-Z])?)', which should catch all
       destination specifications containing a specific word.

       If the regular expression contains `^FROM_DAEMON' it will be substitut-
       ed by `(^(Mailing-List:|Precedence:.*(junk|bulk|list)|To: Multiple
       recipients of |(((Resent-)?(From|Sender)|X-Envelope-From):|>?From
       )([^>]*[^(.%@a-z0-9])?(Post(ma?(st(e?r)?|n)|office)|(send)?Mail(er)?
       |daemon|m(mdf|ajordomo)|n?uucp|LIST(SERV|proc)|NETSERV|o(wner|ps)
       |r(e(quest|sponse)|oot)|b(ounce|bs\.smtp)|echo|mirror|s(erv(ices?|er)
       |mtp(error)?|ystem)|A(dmin(istrator)?|MMGR|utoanswer))(([^).!:a-
       z0-9][-_a-z0-9]*)?[%@>\t ][^<)]*(\(.*\).*)?)?$([^>]|$)))', which should
       catch mails coming from most daemons (how's that for a regular
       expression :-).

       If the regular expression contains `^FROM_MAILER' it will be substitut-
       ed by `(^(((Resent-)?(From|Sender)|X-Envelope-From):|>?From
       )([^>]*[^(.%@a-z0-9])?(Post(ma(st(er)?|n)|office)|(send)?Mail(er)?
       |daemon|mmdf|n?uucp|ops|r(esponse|oot)|(bbs\.)?smtp(error)?|s(erv(ices?
       |er)|ystem)|A(dmin(istrator)?|MMGR))(([^).!:a-z0-9][-_a-z0-9]*)?[%@>\t
       ][^<)]*(\(.*\).*)?)?$([^>]|$))' (a stripped down version of
       `^FROM_DAEMON'), which should catch mails coming from most mailer-
       daemons.

       When  assigning  boolean values to variables like VERBOSE, DELIVERED or
       COMSAT, procmail accepts as true every string starting with: a non-zero
       value,  `on',  `y', `t' or `e'.  False is every string starting with: a
       zero value, `off', `n', `f' or `d'.

       If the action line of a recipe specifies a program, a  sole  backslash-
       newline  pair in it on an otherwise empty line will be converted into a
       newline.

       The regular expression engine built  into  procmail  does  not  support
       named character classes.


NOTES

       Since  unquoted  leading  whitespace is generally ignored in the rcfile
       you can indent everything to taste.

       The leading `|' on the action line to specify a program  or  filter  is
       stripped before checking for $SHELLMETAS.

       Files included with the INCLUDERC directive containing only environment
       variable assignments can be shared with sh.

       The current behavior of assignments on the command  line  to  INCLUDERC
       and  SWITCHRC is not guaranteed, has been changed once already, and may
       be changed again or removed in future releases.

       For really complicated processing you can even consider  calling  proc-
       mail recursively.

       In  the old days, the `:0' that marks the beginning of a recipe, had to
       be changed to `:n', whereby `n' denotes the number of  conditions  that
       follow.


AUTHORS

       Stephen R. van den Berg
              <srb@cuci.nl>
       Philip A. Guenther
              <guenther@sendmail.com>



BuGless                           2001/08/04                     procmailrc(5)

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