If $HOME/.mailfilter exists, filtering instructions in this file will be carried out prior to delivering the message. The filtering instructions may instruct maildrop to discard the message, save the message in a different mailbox, or forward the message to another address. If $HOME/.mailfilter does not exist, or does not provide explicit delivery instructions, maildrop delivers the message to the user's system mailbox.
The files in $HOME/.mailfilters are used when maildrop is invoked in embedded mode.
Take all mail that's sent to the 'auto' mailing list, and save it in
Mail/auto. The 'auto' mailing list software adds a
"Delivered-To: auto@domain.com" header to all messages:
After the to command delivers the message,
maildrop automatically
stops filtering and terminates without executing the subsequent instructions
in the
filter file.
Take all mail from <boss@domain.com> about the current project
status, save it in Mail/project, then forward a copy to
John:
Note that it is necessary to use a backslash in order to continue the
if statement on the next line.
Keep copies of the last 50 messages that you received in the
maildir
directory 'backup'. NOTE: 'backup' must be a maildir
directory, not a
mailbox. You can create a maildir using the
maildirmake
command.
Put this at the beginning of your filter file, before any other filtering
instructions. This is a good idea to have when you are learning
maildrop. If you make a mistake and accidentally delete a
message, you
can recover it from the backup/new subdirectory.
Save messages that are at least 100 lines long (approximately) into
Mail/IN.Large::
Send messages from the auto mailing list to the program 'archive', using a
lock file to make sure that only one instance of the archive program will be
running at the same time:
Check if the Message-ID: header in the message is identical
to the same header
that was recently seen. Discard the message if it is, otherwise continue to
filter the message:
The reformail command maintains a list of
recently seen Message-IDs in the file
duplicate.cache.
Here's a more complicated example. This fragment is intended to go right
after the message has been filtered according to your regular rules, and just
before the message should be saved in your mailbox:
cc $DEFAULT
xfilter "reformail -r -t"
/^To:.*/
getaddr($MATCH) =~ /^.*/;
MATCH=tolower($MATCH)
flock "vacation.lock" {
`fgrep -iqx "$MATCH" vacation.lst 2>/dev/null || { \
echo "$MATCH" >>vacation.lst ; \
exit 1 ; \
} `
}
if ( $RETURNCODE == 0 )
exit
to "| ( cat - ; echo ''; cat vacation.msg) | $SENDMAIL"
This code maintains a list of everyone who sent you mail in the file called vacation.lst. When a message is received from anyone that is not already on the list, the address is added to the list, and the contents of the file vacation.msg are mailed back to the sender. This is intended to reply notify people that you will not be answering mail for a short period of time.
The first statement saves the original message in your regular mailbox. Then, xfilter< is used to generate an autoreply header to the sender. The To: header in the autoreply - which was the sender of the original message - is extracted, and the getaddr function is used to strip the person's name, leaving the address only. The file vacation.lst is checked, using a lock file to guarantee atomic access and update (overkill, probably). Note that the backslashes are required.
If the address is already in the file, maildrop exits, otherwise the contents of vacation.msg are appended to the autoreply header, and mailed out.
Here's a version of the vacation script that uses a GDBM database file instead. The difference between this script and the previous script is that the previous script will send a vacation message to a given E-mail address only once. The following script will store the time that the vacation message was sent in the GDBM file. If it's been at least a week since the vacation message has been sent to the given address, another vacation message will be sent.
Even though a GDBM database file is used, locking is still necessary
because the GDBM library does not allow more than one process to open the same
database file for writing:
cc $DEFAULT
xfilter "reformail -r -t"
/^To:.*/
getaddr($MATCH) =~ /^.*/;
MATCH=tolower($MATCH)
flock "vacation.lock" {
current_time=time;
if (gdbmopen("vacation.dat", "C") == 0)
{
if ( (prev_time=gdbmfetch($MATCH)) ne "" && \
$prev_time >= $current_time - 60 * 60 * 24 * 7)
{
exit
}
gdbmstore($MATCH, $current_time)
gdbmclose
}
}
to "| ( cat - ; echo ''; cat vacation.msg) | $SENDMAIL"
This script requires that maildrop must be compiled with GDBM support enabled, which is done by default if GDBM libraries are present.
After you return from vacation, you can use a simple Perl script to obtain a list of everyone who sent you mail (of course, that can also be determined by examining your mailbox).