PROCMAILRC(5)



PROCMAILRC(5)                 File Formats Manual                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 ig-
       nored 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  Ex-
       tended 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 de-
            livering 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 in-
       side  a subdirectory named "new".  If the mailbox is specified to be an
       MH folder or maildir folder, procmail will create the necessary  direc-
       tories  if they don't exist, rather than treat the mailbox as a non-ex-
       istent filename.  When procmail is delivering to directories,  you  can
       specify multiple directories to deliver to (procmail will do so utilis-
       ing hardlinks).

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

       PATH                  $HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin :/usr/bin :/bin  (Except
                             during the processing of an /etc/procmailrc file,
                             when it will be set to `/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin
                             :/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      3.23pre

       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  de-
                   livered  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 ab-
                   stract for every successful delivering recipe it processes.

       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 re-
                   sort.  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  ba-
                   sis) 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  de-
                   faults 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 re-
                   moved by force now.  If zero, then no timeout will be  used
                   and  procmail  will  wait forever until the lockfile is re-
                   moved; if not specified, it defaults to 1024 seconds.  This
                   variable  is  useful to prevent indefinite hangups of send-
                   mail/procmail.  Procmail is immune to clock skew across ma-
                   chines.

       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 de-
                   livering  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 to-
                   gether 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 rc-
                   file.  Nesting is permitted and only limited by systems re-
                   sources (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  rc-
                   file  will be aborted and the named rcfile started.  Unset-
                   ting 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 rc-
                   file 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; in particular, the repetition operator {
       is not supported by procmail's egrep):

       ^         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 rc-
       file 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,  re-
       compiling procmail with the desired value is currently the only correct
       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), 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
       '*', '+', or '?' operator on the left-hand side of the \/ token.

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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