MAN page from Old RedHat 5.X procmail-3.10-12.i386.rpm

FORMAIL

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 1994/10/18
Index

NAME

formail - mail (re)formatter

SYNOPSIS

formail[+skip][-total][-bczfrktnedqBY][-pprefix]
     [-Dmaxlen idcache]
     [-xheaderfield][-Xheaderfield]
     [-aheaderfield][-Aheaderfield]
     [-iheaderfield][-Iheaderfield]
     [-uheaderfield][-Uheaderfield]
     [-Roldfieldnewfield]
     [-mminfields][-s[command[arg...]]]

DESCRIPTION

formailis a filter that can be used to force mail into mailbox format, perform`From ' escaping, generate auto-replying headers, do simpleheader munging/extracting or split up amailbox/digest/articles file. The mail/mailbox/article contents will beexpected on stdin.

If formail is supposed to determine the sender of the mail, but is unableto find any, it will substitute `foo@bar'.

If formail is started without any command line options, it will force anymail coming from stdin into mailbox format and will escapeallbogus `From ' lines with a `>'.

OPTIONS

-b: Don't escape any bogus mailbox headers (i.e. lines starting with `From ').
-p prefix: Define a different quotation prefix. If unspecified it defaults to `>'.
-Y: Assume traditional Berkeley mailbox format, ignoring anyContent-Length:fields.
-c: Concatenate continued fields in the header. Might be convenient whenpostprocessing mail with standard (line oriented) text utilities.
-z: Ensure a space exists between field name and content.Zap fields which contain only a space.Zap leading and trailing whitespace on fields extracted with-x.
-f: Force formail to simply pass along any non-mailbox format (i.e. don'tgenerate a `From ' line as the first line).
-r: Generate an auto-reply header. This will normally throw away all the existingfields (except X-Loop:) in the original message, fields you wish to preserveneed to be named using the-ioption. If you use this option in conjunction with-k,you can prevent the body from being `escaped' by also specifying-b.
-k: When generating the auto-reply header or when extracting fields, keepthe body as well.
-t: Trust the sender to have used a valid return address in his header. Thisoption will be most useful when generating auto-reply headers from newsarticles. If this option is not turned on, formail tends to favourmachine-generated addresses in the header.
-s: The input will be split up into separate mail messages, and piped intoa program one by one (a new program is started for every part).-shas to be the last option specified, the first argument following itis expected to be the name of a program, any other arguments will be passedalong to it. If you omit the program, then formail will simply concatenate thesplitted mails on stdout again. SeeFILENO.
-n: Tell formail not to wait for every program to finish before starting the next(causes splits to be processed in parallel).
-e: Do not require empty lines to be preceding the header of a new message (i.e.the messages could start on every line).
-d: Tell formail that the messages it is supposed to split need not be in strictmailbox format (i.e. allows you to split digests/articles or non-standardmailbox formats). This disables recognition of theContent-Length:field.
-B: Makes formail assume that it is splitting up a BABYL rmail file.
-m minfields: Allows you to specify the number of consecutive fields formail needs to findbefore it decides it found the start of a new message, it defaults to2.
-q: Tells formail to (still detect but) be quiet about write errors, duplicatemessages and mismatchedContent-Length:fields. This option is on by default, to make it display the messages use-q-.
-D maxlen idcache: Formail will detect if the Message-ID of the current message has alreadybeen seen using anidcachefile of approximatelymaxlensize. If not splitting, it will return success if a duplicate has beenfound. If splitting, it will not output duplicate messages.If used in conjunction with-r,formail will look at themail addressof the senderinsteadat the Message-ID.
-x headerfield: Extract the contents of thisheaderfieldfrom the header, display it as a single line.
-X headerfield: Same as-x,but also preserves the field name.
-a headerfield: Append a customheaderfieldonto the header; but only if a similar field does not exist yet.If you specify either one of the field namesMessage-ID:orResent-Message-ID:with no field contents, then formail will generate a unique message-ID for you.
-A headerfield: Append a customheaderfieldonto the header in any case.
-i headerfield: Same as-A,except that any existing similar fields are renamed by prependingan ``Old-'' prefix. Ifheaderfieldconsists only of a field-name, it will not be appended.
-I headerfield: Same as-i,except that any existing similar fields are simply removed. Ifheaderfieldconsists only of a field-name, it effectively deletes the field.
-u headerfield: Make the first occurrence of this field unique, and thus delete allsubsequent occurrences of it.
-U headerfield: Make the last occurrence of this field unique, and thus delete allpreceding occurrences of it.
-R oldfield newfield: Renames all occurrences of the fieldnameoldfieldintonewfield.
+skip: Skip the firstskipmessages while splitting.
-total: Output at mosttotalmessages while splitting.

ENVIRONMENT

FILENO: While splitting, formail assigns the message number currently being output tothis variable. By presetting FILENO, you can change the initial messagenumber being used and the width of the zero-padded output. If FILENO isunset it will default to 000. If FILENO is non-empty anddoes not contain a number, FILENO generation is disabled.

EXAMPLES

To split up a digest one usually uses:

: formail +1 -ds >>the_mailbox_of_your_choice

: formail +1 -ds procmail

To remove all Received: fields from the header:

: formail -I Received:

To remove all fields except From: and Subject: from the header:

: formail -k -X From: -X Subject:

To supersede the Reply-To: field in a header you could use:

: formail -i "Reply-To: foo@bar"

To convert a non-standard mailbox file into a standard mailbox file you canuse:

: formail -ds <old_mailbox >>new_mailbox

Or, if you have a very tolerant mailer:

: formail -a Date: -ds <old_mailbox >>new_mailbox

To extract the header from a message:

: formail -X ""

: sed -e '/^$/ q'

To extract the body from a message:

: formail -I ""

: sed -e '1,/^$/ d'

DIAGNOSTICS

Can't fork: Too many processes on this machine.
Content-Length: field exceeds actual length by nnn bytes: The Content-Length: field in the header specified a length that was longerthan the actual body. This causes this message to absorb a number ofsubsequent messages following it in the same mailbox.
Couldn't write to stdout: The program that formail was trying to pipe into didn't accept all the dataformail sent to it; this diagnostic can be suppressed by the-qoption.
Duplicate key found: x: The Message-ID or sender x in this message was found in the idcache; thisdiagnostic can be suppressed by the-qoption.
Failed to execute "x": Program not in path, or not executable.
File table full: Too many open files on this machine.
Invalid field-name: "x": The specified field-name "x" contains control characters, or cannot be apartial field-name for this option.

WARNINGS

You can save yourself and others a lot of grief if you try to avoid usingthis autoreply feature on mails coming through mailinglists. Dependingon the format of the incoming mail (which in turn depends on both theoriginal sender's mail agent and the mailinglist setup) formail coulddecide to generate an autoreply header that replies to the list.

BUGS

When formail has to generate a leading `From ' line it normally will containthe current date. If formail is given the option `-a Date:',it will use the date from the `Date:' field in the header (if present).However, since formail copies it verbatim, the format will differ from thatexpected by most mail readers.

If formail is instructed to delete or rename the leading `From ' line, itwill not automatically regenerate it as usual. To force formail to regenerateit in this case, include -a 'From '.

If formail is not called as the first program in a pipe and it is told tosplit up the input in several messages, then formail will not terminate untilthe program it receives the input from terminates itself.

MISCELLANEOUS

Formail is eight-bit clean.

When formail has to determine the sender's address, every RFC 822 conformingmail address is allowed. Formail will always strip down the address toits minimal form (deleting excessive comments and whitespace).

The regular expression that is used to find `real' postmarks is:

: "\n\nFrom [\t ]*[^\t\n ]+[\t ]+[^\n\t ]"

If aContent-Length:field is found in a header, formail will copy the number of specified bytes inthe body verbatim before resuming the regular scanning for message boundaries(except when splitting digests or Berkeley mailbox format is assumed).

NOTES

Calling up formail with the -h or -? options will causeit to display a command-line help page.

SOURCE

This program is part of theprocmail mail-processing-package(v3.10 1994/10/31) available at your nearest USENET comp.sources.misc archive, orat ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de aspub/packages/procmail/procmail.tar.gz.

MAILINGLIST

There exists a mailinglist for questions relating to any program in theprocmail package:

procmailAATTinformatik.rwth-aachen.de

: for submitting questions/answers.

procmail-requestAATTinformatik.rwth-aachen.de

: for subscription requests.

AUTHOR

Stephen R. van den Berg at RWTH-Aachen, Germany

: bergAATTpool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de

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