From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@netcom.com>
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 95 11:27:40 PST
To: Adam Shostack <adam@bwh.harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: procmail: another question
In-Reply-To: <199501101826.NAA15838@hermes.bwh.harvard.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9501101110.A28938-0100000@netcom5>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Tue, 10 Jan 1995, Adam Shostack wrote:
> 	Procmail is a very versatile, relatively easy to use way of
> processing mail.

"Relatively easy"  -- Relative to the usual venomous Unix 
user hostile interface that is.   I use procmail, but my 
local Unix guru does not, even though he has a clear need to do so.

>  Its most obvious function is to put mailing lists
> into one or several folders, but it also can be made into a file
> server*, automatically retrieve PGP keys, act as a basic remailer,
> etc, etc.

The .procmailrc file is in effect a program, rather than
a bunch of flags.

Every time procmail receives a message it interpretively 
executes this program, which does a pattern match on the mail, if
it gets a match, passes the mail to some external program,
which may be yet another invocation of procmail executing
a different .rc file.

Now if us windows folk had done it, we would have done
it as visual basic controls and we would have created
an installation program.  Still I must 
confess, we windows folk have not done it and the unix folk have
done it, so I guess it is score 1 for unix, 0 for
windows.

But I guarantee the chairman of the board is not going
to use procmail.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our
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are.  True law derives from this right, not from    http://nw.com/jamesd/
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