PART 3Useful Scripts

CHAPTER 30Automating E-mail withprocmail

An autonomous mail processor, procmail allows you to process your e-mail based on rules. This is much like setting up rules in your e-mail client for the handling of messages based on, for example, the sender's e-mail address or on specified strings in the subject line. One of procmail's advantages, compared to traditional e-mail clients, is that the rules can be defined in such a way that when specific criteria are met, a script is called to perform a task.

Whatever you can do in a shell script, you can do with procmail. Once you have mastered the art of writing procmail scripts, it is a very powerful skill to have in your arsenal. I have used procmail for quite a few tasks. One ...

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