1Please read the README file in this directory first. 2.ex 3.Id $Id: procmailrc.man,v 1.85 2001/08/04 06:08:21 guenther Exp $ 4.TH PROCMAILRC 5 \*(Dt BuGless 5.na 6.SH NAME 7procmailrc \- procmail rcfile 8.SH SYNOPSIS 9.B @PROCMAILRC@ 10.ad 11.SH DESCRIPTION 12For a quick start, see 13.B NOTES 14at the end of the 15.BR procmail (1) 16man page. 17.PP 18The rcfile can contain a mixture of environment variable assignments (some 19of which have special meanings to procmail), and recipes. In their most 20simple appearance, the recipes are simply one line regular expressions 21that are searched for in the header of the arriving mail. The first recipe 22that matches is used to determine where the mail has to go (usually a file). 23If processing falls off the end of the rcfile, procmail will deliver the mail 24to 25.BR $DEFAULT . 26.PP 27There are two kinds of recipes: delivering and non-delivering recipes. 28If a 29.I delivering recipe 30is found to match, procmail considers the mail (you guessed it) delivered and 31will 32.I cease processing 33the rcfile after having successfully executed the action line of the recipe. 34If a 35.I non-delivering recipe 36is found to match, processing of the rcfile will 37.I continue 38after the action line of this recipe has been executed. 39.PP 40Delivering recipes are those that cause header and/or body of the mail to 41be: written into a file, absorbed by a program or forwarded to a mailaddress. 42.PP 43Non-delivering recipes are: those that cause the output of a program or 44filter to be captured back by procmail or those that start a nesting block. 45.PP 46You can tell procmail to treat a 47.I delivering recipe 48as if it were a non-delivering recipe by specifying the `@CONTINUE@' flag on 49such a recipe. This will make procmail generate a 50.I carbon copy 51of the mail by delivering it to this recipe, yet continue processing the 52rcfile. 53.PP 54By using any number of recipes you can presort your mail extremely 55straightforward into several mailfolders. Bear in mind though that the mail 56can arrive concurrently in these mailfolders (if several procmail programs 57happen to run at the same time, not unlikely if a lot of mail arrives). To 58make sure this does not result in a mess, proper use of lockfiles is highly 59recommended. 60.PP 61The environment variable 62.B assignments 63and 64.B recipes 65can be freely intermixed in the rcfile. If any environment variable has 66a special meaning to procmail, it will be used appropriately the moment 67it is parsed (i.e., you can change the current directory whenever you 68want by specifying a new 69.BR MAILDIR , 70switch lockfiles by specifying a new 71.BR LOCKFILE , 72change the umask at any time, etc., the possibilities are endless :\-). 73.PP 74The assignments and substitutions of these environment variables are handled 75exactly like in 76.BR sh (1) 77(that includes all possible quotes and escapes), 78with the added bonus that blanks around the '=' sign are ignored and that, 79if an environment variable appears without a trailing '=', it will be 80removed from the environment. Any program in backquotes started by procmail 81will have the entire mail at its stdin. 82.PP 83.SS Comments 84A word beginning with # and all the following characters up to a NEWLINE 85are ignored. This does not apply to condition lines, which cannot be 86commented. 87.SS Recipes 88.PP 89A line starting with ':' marks the beginning of a recipe. It has the 90following format: 91.Sx 3 92:0 [\fIflags\fP] [ : [\fIlocallockfile\fP] ] 93<zero or more conditions (one per line)> 94<exactly one action line> 95.Ex 96Conditions start with a leading `*', everything after that character 97is passed on to the internal egrep 98.BR literally , 99except for leading and trailing whitespace. 100These regular expressions are 101.B completely 102compatible to the normal 103.BR egrep (1) 104extended regular expressions. See also 105.BR "Extended regular expressions" . 106.PP 107Conditions are anded; if there are no conditions the result will be true 108by default. 109.PP 110.I Flags 111can be any of the following: 112.TP 0.5i 113.B @HEAD_GREP@ 114Egrep the header (default). 115.TP 116.B @BODY_GREP@ 117Egrep the body. 118.TP 119.B @DISTINGUISH_CASE@ 120Tell the internal egrep to distinguish between upper and lower case (contrary 121to the default which is to ignore case). 122.TP 123.B @ALSO_NEXT_RECIPE@ 124This recipe will not be executed unless the conditions on the last preceding 125recipe (on the current block-nesting level) without the `@ALSO_NEXT_RECIPE@' or 126`@ALSO_N_IF_SUCC@' flag matched as well. This allows you to chain actions 127that depend on a common condition. 128.TP 129.B @ALSO_N_IF_SUCC@ 130Has the same meaning as the `@ALSO_NEXT_RECIPE@' flag, with the additional 131condition that the immediately preceding recipe must have been 132.I successfully 133completed before this recipe is executed. 134.TP 135.B @ELSE_DO@ 136This recipe only executes if the immediately preceding recipe was not 137executed. Execution of this recipe also disables any immediately 138following recipes with the '@ELSE_DO@' flag. This allows you to specify 139`else if' actions. 140.TP 141.B @ERROR_DO@ 142This recipe only executes if the immediately preceding recipe 143.IR failed 144(i.e., the action line was attempted, but resulted in an error). 145.TP 146.B @PASS_HEAD@ 147Feed the header to the pipe, file or mail destination (default). 148.TP 149.B @PASS_BODY@ 150Feed the body to the pipe, file or mail destination (default). 151.TP 152.B @FILTER@ 153Consider the pipe as a filter. 154.TP 155.B @CONTINUE@ 156Generate a 157.B carbon copy 158of this mail. This only makes sense on 159.I delivering 160recipes. The only non-delivering recipe this flag has an effect on is 161on a nesting block, in order to generate a carbon copy this will 162.B clone 163the running procmail process (lockfiles will not be inherited), whereby 164the clone will proceed as usual and the parent will jump across the block. 165.TP 166.B @WAIT_EXIT@ 167Wait for the filter or program to finish and check its exitcode (normally 168ignored); if the filter is unsuccessful, then the text will not have been 169filtered. 170.TP 171.B @WAIT_EXIT_QUIET@ 172Has the same meaning as the `@WAIT_EXIT@' flag, but will suppress any 173`Program failure' message. 174.TP 175.B @IGNORE_WRITERR@ 176Ignore any write errors on this recipe (i.e., usually due to an early closed 177pipe). 178.TP 179.B @RAW_NONL@ 180Raw mode, do not try to ensure the mail ends with an empty line, write 181it out as is. 182.PP 183There are some special conditions you can use that are not straight regular 184expressions. To select them, the condition must start with: 185.TP 0.5i 186.B ! 187Invert the condition. 188.TP 189.B $ 190Evaluate the remainder of this condition according to 191.BR sh (1) 192substitution rules inside double quotes, skip leading whitespace, 193then reparse it. 194.TP 195.B ? 196Use the exitcode of the specified program. 197.TP 198.B < 199Check if the total length of the mail is shorter than the specified (in 200decimal) number of bytes. 201.TP 202.B > 203Analogous to '<'. 204.TP 205.B "variablename \fI??\fP" 206Match the remainder of this condition against the value of this environment 207variable (which cannot be a pseudo variable). A special case is if 208variablename is equal to `B', `H', `HB' or `BH'; this merely overrides the 209default header/body search area defined by the initial flags on this recipe. 210.TP 211.B \e 212To quote any of the above at the start of the line. 213.SS "Local lockfile" 214.PP 215If you put a second (trailing) ':' on the first recipe line, then procmail 216will use a 217.I locallockfile 218(for this recipe only). You can optionally specify the locallockfile 219to use; if you don't however, procmail will use the destination filename 220(or the filename following the first '>>') and will append $LOCKEXT to it. 221.SS "Recipe action line" 222.PP 223The action line can start with the following characters: 224.TP 225.B ! 226Forwards to all the specified mail addresses. 227.TP 228.B | 229Starts the specified program, possibly in $SHELL if any 230of the characters $SHELLMETAS are spotted. You can optionally prepend this 231pipe symbol with 232.IR variable= , 233which will cause stdout of the program to be captured in the environment 234.I variable 235(procmail will 236.B not 237terminate processing the rcfile at this point). 238If you specify just this pipe symbol, without any program, then procmail will 239pipe the mail to stdout. 240.TP 241.B { 242Followed by at least one space, tab or newline will mark the start of a 243nesting block. Everything up till the next closing brace will depend on 244the conditions specified for this recipe. Unlimited nesting is permitted. 245The closing brace exists merely to delimit the block, it will 246.I not 247cause procmail to terminate in any way. If the end of a block is reached 248processing will continue as usual after the block. 249On a nesting block, the flags `@HEAD_GREP@' and `@BODY_GREP@' only affect 250the conditions leading up to the block, the flags `@PASS_HEAD@' and 251`@PASS_BODY@' have no effect whatsoever. 252.PP 253Anything else will be taken as a mailbox name (either a filename or a 254directory, absolute or relative to the current directory (see MAILDIR)). 255If it is a (possibly yet nonexistent) filename, the mail will be appended to 256it. 257.PP 258If it is a directory, the mail will be delivered to a newly created, 259guaranteed to be unique file named $MSGPREFIX* in the specified directory. 260If the mailbox name ends in "@MCDIRSEP@@chCURDIR@", then this directory is 261presumed to be an MH folder; i.e., procmail will use the next number it 262finds available. If the mailbox name ends in "@MCDIRSEP@", then this 263directory is presumed to be a maildir folder; i.e., procmail will deliver 264the message to a file in a subdirectory named "tmp" and rename it to be 265inside a subdirectory named "new". If the mailbox is specified to be an MH 266folder or maildir folder, procmail will create the necessary directories if 267they don't exist, rather than treat the mailbox as a non-existent 268filename. When procmail is delivering to directories, you can specify 269multiple directories to deliver to (procmail will do so utilising 270hardlinks). 271.SS "Environment variable defaults" 272.TP 2.2i 273.B "LOGNAME, HOME and SHELL" 274Your (the recipient's) defaults 275.TP 276.B PATH 277.na 278\&@DEFpath@ 279(Except 280.ad 281during the processing of an @ETCRC@ file, when it will be set 282to 283.na 284`\&@DEFspath@'.) 285.ad 286.TP 287.B SHELLMETAS 288\&@DEFshellmetas@ 289.TP 290.B SHELLFLAGS 291\&@DEFshellflags@ 292.TP 293.BR ORGMAIL 294\&@MAILSPOOLDIR@$LOGNAME 295.br 296(Unless 297.B \-@MAILFILTOPT@ 298has been specified, in which case it is unset) 299.TP 300.B MAILDIR 301\&@DEFmaildir@ 302.br 303(Unless the name of the first successfully opened rcfile starts with 304`@chCURDIR@@MCDIRSEP@' or if 305.B \-@MAILFILTOPT@ 306has been specified, in which case it defaults to `@chCURDIR@') 307.TP 308.B DEFAULT 309\&@DEFdefault@ 310.TP 311.B MSGPREFIX 312\&@DEFmsgprefix@ 313.TP 314.B SENDMAIL 315\&@DEFsendmail@ 316.TP 317.B SENDMAILFLAGS 318\&@DEFflagsendmail@ 319.TP 320.B HOST 321The current hostname 322.TP 323.B COMSAT 324\&@DEFcomsat@ 325.br 326(If an rcfile is specified on the command line) 327.TP 328.B PROCMAIL_VERSION 329\&@PM_VERSION@ 330.TP 331.B LOCKEXT 332\&@DEFlockext@@PRESTENV@@LD_ENV_FIX@ 333.SS Environment 334.PP 335Before you get lost in the multitude of environment variables, keep in mind 336that all of them have reasonable defaults. 337.TP 1.2i 338.B MAILDIR 339Current directory while procmail is executing (that means that all paths 340are relative to $MAILDIR). 341.TP 342.B DEFAULT 343Default 344.B mailbox 345file (if not told otherwise, procmail will dump mail in this mailbox). 346Procmail will automatically use $DEFAULT$LOCKEXT as lockfile prior to writing 347to this mailbox. You do not need to set this variable, since it already 348points to the standard system mailbox. 349.TP 350.B LOGFILE 351This file will also contain any error or diagnostic messages from procmail 352(normally none :\-) or any other programs started by procmail. If this file 353is not specified, any diagnostics or error messages will 354@pconsole@@console@@aconsole@ 355See also 356.BR LOGABSTRACT . 357.TP 358.B VERBOSE 359You can turn on 360.I extended diagnostics 361by setting this variable to `yes' or `on', to turn it off again set it to `no' 362or `off'. 363.TP 364.B LOGABSTRACT 365Just before procmail exits it logs an abstract of the delivered message in 366$LOGFILE showing the `@FROM@' and `Subject:' fields of the header, what folder 367it finally went to and how long (in bytes) the message was. By setting this 368variable to `no', generation of this abstract is suppressed. If you set 369it to `all', procmail will log an abstract for every successful 370.I delivering recipe 371it processes. 372.TP 373.B LOG 374Anything assigned to this variable will be appended to $LOGFILE. 375.TP 376.B ORGMAIL 377Usually the system mailbox (\fBOR\fPi\fBG\fPinal \fBMAIL\fPbox). If, for 378some obscure reason (like `\fBfilesystem full\fP') the mail could not be 379delivered, then this mailbox will be the last resort. If procmail 380fails to save the mail in here (deep, deep trouble :\-), then the mail 381will bounce back to the sender. 382.TP 383.B LOCKFILE 384Global semaphore file. If this file already exists, procmail 385will wait until it has gone before proceeding, and will create it itself 386(cleaning it up when ready, of course). If more than one 387.I lockfile 388are specified, then the previous one will be removed before trying to create 389the new one. The use of a global lockfile is discouraged, whenever possible 390use locallockfiles (on a per recipe basis) instead. 391.TP 392.B LOCKEXT 393Default extension that is appended to a destination file to determine 394what local 395.I lockfile 396to use (only if turned on, on a per-recipe basis). 397.TP 398.B LOCKSLEEP 399Number of seconds procmail will sleep before retrying on a 400.I lockfile 401(if it already existed); if not specified, it defaults to @DEFlocksleep@ 402seconds. 403.TP 404.B LOCKTIMEOUT 405Number of seconds that have to have passed since a 406.I lockfile 407was last modified/created before procmail decides that this must be an 408erroneously leftover lockfile that can be removed by force now. If zero, 409then no timeout will be used and procmail will wait forever until the 410lockfile is removed; if not specified, it defaults to @DEFlocktimeout@ seconds. 411This variable is useful to prevent indefinite hangups of 412.BR sendmail /procmail. 413Procmail is immune to clock skew across machines. 414.TP 415.B TIMEOUT 416Number of seconds that have to have passed before procmail decides that 417some child it started must be hanging. The offending program will receive 418a TERMINATE signal from procmail, and processing of the rcfile will continue. 419If zero, then no timeout will be used and procmail will wait forever until the 420child has terminated; if not specified, it defaults to @DEFtimeout@ seconds. 421.TP 422.B MSGPREFIX 423Filename prefix that is used when delivering to a directory (not used when 424delivering to a maildir or an MH directory). 425.TP 426.B HOST 427If this is not the 428.I hostname 429of the machine, processing of the current 430.I rcfile 431will immediately cease. If other rcfiles were specified on the 432command line, processing will continue with the next one. If all rcfiles 433are exhausted, the program will terminate, but will not generate an error 434(i.e., to the mailer it will seem that the mail has been delivered). 435.TP 436.B UMASK 437The name says it all (if it doesn't, then forget about this one :\-). 438Anything assigned to UMASK is taken as an 439.B octal 440number. If not specified, the umask defaults to @INIT_UMASK@. If the umask 441permits o+x, all the mailboxes procmail delivers to directly will receive 442an o+x mode change. This can be used to check if new mail arrived. 443.TP 444.B SHELLMETAS 445If any of the characters in SHELLMETAS appears in the line specifying 446a filter or program, the line will be fed to $SHELL 447instead of being executed directly. 448.TP 449.B SHELLFLAGS 450Any invocation of $SHELL will be like: 451.br 452"$SHELL" "$SHELLFLAGS" "$*"; 453.TP 454.B SENDMAIL 455If you're not using the 456.I forwarding 457facility don't worry about this one. It specifies the program being 458called to forward any mail. 459.br 460It gets invoked as: "$SENDMAIL" $SENDMAILFLAGS "$@"; 461.TP 462.B NORESRETRY 463Number of retries that are to be made if any `\fBprocess table full\fP', 464`\fBfile table full\fP', `\fBout of memory\fP' or 465`\fBout of swap space\fP' error should occur. If this number is negative, 466then procmail will retry indefinitely; if not specified, it defaults to 467@DEFnoresretry@ times. The retries occur with a $SUSPEND second interval. The 468idea behind this is that if, e.g., the 469.I swap 470.I space 471has been exhausted or the 472.I process 473.I table 474is full, usually several other programs will either detect this as well 475and abort or crash 8\-), thereby freeing valuable 476.I resources 477for procmail. 478.TP 479.B SUSPEND 480Number of seconds that procmail will pause if it has to wait for something 481that is currently unavailable (memory, fork, etc.); if not specified, it will 482default to @DEFsuspend@ seconds. See also: 483.BR LOCKSLEEP . 484.TP 485.B LINEBUF 486Length of the internal line buffers, cannot be set smaller than @MINlinebuf@. 487All lines read from the 488.I rcfile 489should not exceed $LINEBUF characters before and after expansion. If not 490specified, it defaults to @DEFlinebuf@. This limit, of course, does 491.I not 492apply to the mail itself, which can have arbitrary line lengths, or could 493be a binary file for that matter. See also PROCMAIL_OVERFLOW. 494.TP 495.B DELIVERED 496If set to `yes' procmail will pretend (to the mail agent) the mail 497has been delivered. If mail cannot be delivered after having met this 498assignment (set to `yes'), the mail will be lost (i.e., it will not bounce). 499.TP 500.B TRAP 501When procmail terminates of its own accord and not because it 502received a signal, it will execute the contents of this variable. 503A copy of the mail can be read from stdin. Any output produced by this 504command will be appended to $LOGFILE. Possible uses for TRAP are: removal 505of temporary files, logging customised abstracts, etc. See also 506.B EXITCODE 507and 508.BR LOGABSTRACT . 509.TP 510.B EXITCODE 511By default, procmail returns an exitcode of zero (success) if it 512successfully delivered the message or if the 513.B HOST 514variable was misset and there were no more rcfiles on the command 515line; otherwise it returns failure. Before doing so, procmail 516examines the value of this variable. If it is set to a positive 517numeric value, procmail will instead use that value as its exitcode. 518If this variable is set but empty and 519.B TRAP 520is set, procmail will set the exitcode to whatever the 521.B TRAP 522program returns. If this variable is not set, procmail will set 523it shortly before calling up the 524.B TRAP 525program. 526.TP 527.B LASTFOLDER 528This variable is assigned to by procmail whenever it is delivering 529to a folder or program. It always contains the name of the last file 530(or program) procmail delivered to. If the last delivery was to 531several directory folders together then $LASTFOLDER will contain 532the hardlinked filenames as a space separated list. 533.TP 534.B @MATCHVAR@ 535This variable is assigned to by procmail whenever it is told to extract 536text from a matching regular expression. It will contain all text 537matching the regular expression past the `\fB\e/\fP' token. 538.TP 539.B SHIFT 540Assigning a positive value to this variable has the same effect as 541the `shift' command in 542.BR sh (1). 543This command is most useful to extract extra arguments passed to procmail 544when acting as a generic mailfilter. 545.TP 546.B INCLUDERC 547Names an rcfile (relative to the current directory) which will be 548included here as if it were part of the current rcfile. Nesting is 549permitted and only limited by systems resources (memory and file 550descriptors). As no checking is done on the permissions or ownership 551of the rcfile, users of 552.B INCLUDERC 553should make sure that only trusted users have write access to the included 554rcfile or the directory it is in. Command line assignments to 555.B INCLUDERC 556have no effect. 557.TP 558.B SWITCHRC 559Names an rcfile (relative to the current directory) to which processing 560will be switched. If the named rcfile doesn't exist or is not a normal 561file or /dev/null then an error will be logged and processing will 562continue in the current rcfile. Otherwise, processing of the current 563rcfile will be aborted and the named rcfile started. Unsetting 564.B SWITCHRC 565aborts processing of the current rcfile as if it had ended at the 566assignment. As with 567.BR INCLUDERC , 568no checking is done on the permissions or ownership of the rcfile 569and command line assignments have no effect. 570.TP 571.B PROCMAIL_VERSION 572The version number of the running procmail binary. 573.TP 574.B PROCMAIL_OVERFLOW 575This variable will be set to a non-empty value if procmail detects a 576buffer overflow. See the 577.B BUGS 578section below for other details of operation when overflow occurs. 579.TP 580.B COMSAT 581.BR Comsat (8)/ biff (1) 582notification is on by default, it can be turned off by setting this variable 583to `no'. Alternatively the biff-service can be customised by setting it to 584either `service@SERV_ADDRsep@', `@SERV_ADDRsep@hostname', or 585`service@SERV_ADDRsep@hostname'. When not specified it defaults 586to @COMSATservice@@SERV_ADDRsep@@COMSAThost@.@DROPPRIVS@ 587.SS "Extended regular expressions" 588The following tokens are known to both the procmail internal egrep and the 589standard 590.BR egrep (1) 591(beware that some egrep implementations include other non-standard extensions): 592.TP 1.0i 593.B ^ 594Start of a line. 595.TP 596.B $ 597End of a line. 598.TP 599.B . 600Any character except a newline. 601.TP 602.B a* 603Any sequence of zero or more a's. 604.TP 605.B a+ 606Any sequence of one or more a's. 607.TP 608.B a? 609Either zero or one a. 610.TP 611.B [^-a-d] 612Any character which is 613.B not 614either a dash, a, b, c, d or newline. 615.TP 616.B de|abc 617Either the sequence `de' or `abc'. 618.TP 619.B (abc)* 620Zero or more times the sequence `abc'. 621.TP 622.B \e. 623Matches a single dot; use \e to quote any of the magic characters to get 624rid of their special meaning. See also $\e variable substitution. 625.PP 626These were only samples, of course, any more complex combination is valid 627as well. 628.PP 629The following token meanings are special procmail extensions: 630.TP 1.0i 631\fB^\fP or \fB$\fP 632Match a newline (for multiline matches). 633.TP 634.B ^^ 635Anchor the expression at the very start of the search area, or if encountered 636at the end of the expression, anchor it at the very end of the search area. 637.TP 638\fB\e<\fP or \fB\e>\fP 639Match the character before or after a word. They are merely a shorthand 640for `[^a-zA-Z0-9_]', but can also match newlines. 641Since they match actual characters, they are only suitable to delimit 642words, not to delimit inter-word space. 643.TP 644.B \e/ 645Splits the expression in two parts. Everything matching the right part 646will be assigned to the @MATCHVAR@ environment variable. 647.SH EXAMPLES 648Look in the 649.BR procmailex (5) 650man page. 651.SH CAVEATS 652Continued lines in an action line that specifies a program always have to end 653in a backslash, even if the underlying shell would not need or want the 654backslash to indicate continuation. This is due to the two pass parsing 655process needed (first procmail, then the shell (or not, depending on 656.BR SHELLMETAS )). 657.PP 658Don't put comments on the regular expression condition lines in a 659recipe, these lines are fed to the internal egrep 660.I literally 661(except for continuation backslashes at the end of a line). 662.PP 663Leading whitespace on continued regular expression condition lines 664is usually ignored (so that they can be indented), but 665.B not 666on continued condition lines that are evaluated according to the 667.BR sh (1) 668substitution rules inside double quotes. 669.PP 670Watch out for deadlocks when doing unhealthy things like forwarding mail 671to your own account. Deadlocks can be broken by proper use of 672.BR LOCKTIMEOUT . 673.PP 674Any default values that procmail has for some environment variables will 675.B always 676override the ones that were already defined. If you really want to 677override the defaults, you either have to put them in the 678.B rcfile 679or on the command line as arguments. 680.PP 681The @ETCRC@ file cannot change the PATH setting seen by user rcfiles 682as the value is reset when procmail finishes the @ETCRC@ file. While 683future enhancements are expected in this area, recompiling procmail 684with the desired value is currently the only correct solution. 685.PP 686Environment variables set 687.B inside 688the shell-interpreted-`|' action part of a recipe will 689.B not 690retain their value after the recipe has finished since they are set in a 691subshell of procmail. To make sure the value of an environment variable is 692retained you have to put the assignment to the variable before the leading `|' 693of a recipe, so that it can capture stdout of the program. 694.PP 695If you specify only a `@PASS_HEAD@' or a `@PASS_BODY@' flag on a delivering 696recipe, and the recipe matches, then, unless the `@CONTINUE@' flag is 697present as well, the body respectively the header of the mail will be silently 698lost. 699.SH "SEE ALSO" 700.na 701.nh 702.BR procmail (1), 703.BR procmailsc (5), 704.BR procmailex (5), 705.BR sh (1), 706.BR csh (1), 707.BR mail (1), 708.BR mailx (1), 709.BR binmail (1), 710.BR uucp (1), 711.BR aliases (5), 712.BR sendmail (8), 713.BR egrep (1), 714.BR regexp (5), 715.BR grep (1), 716.BR biff (1), 717.BR comsat (8), 718.BR lockfile (1), 719.BR formail (1) 720.hy 721.ad 722.SH BUGS 723The only substitutions of environment variables that can be handled by 724procmail itself are of the type $name, ${name}, ${name:-text}, ${name:+text}, 725${name-text}, ${name+text}, $\ename, $#, $n, $$, $?, $_, $\- and $=; 726whereby $\ename will be substituted by the 727all-magic-regular-expression-characters-disarmed 728equivalent of $name, $_ by the name of the current rcfile, $\- by 729$LASTFOLDER and $= will contain the score of the last recipe. 730Furthermore, the result of $\ename substitution will never be split on 731whitespace. When the 732.B \-@ARGUMENTOPT@ 733or 734.B \-@MAILFILTOPT@ 735options are used, $# will expand to the number of arguments so 736specified and "$@" (the quotes are required) will expand to the 737specified arguments. However, "$@" will only be expanded when 738used in the argument list to a program, and 739then only one such occurrence will be expanded. 740.PP 741Unquoted variable expansions performed by procmail are always split on 742space, tab, and newline characters; the IFS variable is not used internally. 743.PP 744Procmail does not support the expansion of `~'. 745.PP 746A line buffer of length $LINEBUF is used when processing the 747.IR rcfile , 748any expansions that don't fit within this limit will be truncated and 749PROCMAIL_OVERFLOW will be set. If the overflowing line is a condition 750or an action line, then it will be considered failed and procmail will 751continue processing. If it is a variable assignment or recipe start 752line then procmail will abort the entire rcfile. 753.PP 754If the global lockfile has a 755.I relative 756path, and the current directory 757is not the same as when the global lockfile was created, then the global 758lockfile will not be removed if procmail exits at that point (remedy: 759use 760.I absolute 761paths to specify global lockfiles). 762.PP 763If an rcfile has a 764.I relative 765path and when the rcfile is first opened 766.B MAILDIR 767contains a relative path, and if at one point procmail is instructed to 768clone itself and the current directory has changed since the rcfile was 769opened, then procmail will not be able to clone itself (remedy: use an 770.I absolute 771path to reference the rcfile or make sure MAILDIR contains an absolute 772path as the rcfile is opened). 773.PP 774A locallockfile on the recipe that marks the start of a non-forking nested 775block does not work as expected. 776.PP 777When capturing stdout from a recipe into an environment variable, exactly 778one trailing newline will be stripped. 779.PP 780Some non-optimal and non-obvious regexps set MATCH to an incorrect 781value. The regexp can be made to work by removing one or more unneeded 782'*', '+', or '?' operator on the left-hand side of the \e/ token. 783.SH MISCELLANEOUS 784If the regular expression contains `\fB@TO_key@\fP' it will be substituted by 785.na 786.nh 787`\fB@TO_substitute@\fP', 788which should catch all destination specifications containing a specific 789.IR address . 790.hy 791.ad 792.PP 793If the regular expression contains `\fB@TOkey@\fP' it will be substituted by 794.na 795.nh 796`\fB@TOsubstitute@\fP', 797which should catch all destination specifications containing a specific 798.IR word . 799.hy 800.ad 801.PP 802If the regular expression contains `\fB@FROMDkey@\fP' it will be 803substituted by 804.na 805.nh 806`\fB@FROMDsubstitute@\fP', 807which should catch mails coming from most daemons (how's that for a regular 808expression :\-). 809.hy 810.ad 811.PP 812If the regular expression contains `\fB@FROMMkey@\fP' it will be 813substituted by 814.na 815.nh 816`\fB@FROMMsubstitute@\fP' 817(a stripped down version of `\fB@FROMDkey@\fP'), 818which should catch mails coming from most mailer-daemons. 819.hy 820.ad 821.PP 822When assigning boolean values to variables like VERBOSE, DELIVERED or COMSAT, 823procmail accepts as true every string starting with: a non-zero value, `on', 824`y', `t' or `e'. False is every string starting with: a zero value, `off', 825`n', `f' or `d'. 826.PP 827If the action line of a recipe specifies a program, a sole backslash-newline 828pair in it on an otherwise empty line will be converted into a newline. 829.PP 830The regular expression engine built into procmail does not support named 831character classes. 832.SH NOTES 833Since unquoted leading whitespace is generally ignored in the rcfile you can 834indent everything to taste. 835.PP 836The leading `|' on the action line to specify a program or filter is stripped 837before checking for $SHELLMETAS. 838.PP 839Files included with the INCLUDERC directive containing only environment 840variable assignments can be shared with sh. 841.PP 842The current behavior of assignments on the command line to 843.B INCLUDERC 844and 845.B SWITCHRC 846is not guaranteed, has been changed once already, and may be changed 847again or removed in future releases. 848.PP 849For 850.I really 851complicated processing you can even consider calling 852.B procmail 853recursively. 854.PP 855In the old days, the `:0' that marks the beginning of a recipe, had to 856be changed to `:n', whereby `n' denotes the number of conditions that 857follow. 858