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
       ignored 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
       Extended 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
	    delivering 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
       inside  a  subdirectory named "new".  If the mailbox is specified to be
       an MH folder or maildir folder,	procmail  will	create	the  necessary
       directories  if	they  don't  exist, rather than treat the mailbox as a
       non-existent filename.  When procmail is delivering to directories, you
       can  specify  multiple  directories  to deliver to (procmail will do so
       utilising hardlinks).

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

       PATH		     $HOME/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin
			     :/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin (Except during the
			     processing of an /etc/procmailrc  file,  when  it
			     will be set to `/bin:/usr/bin'.)

       SHELLMETAS	     &|<>~;?*[

       SHELLFLAGS	     -c

       ORGMAIL		     /var/spool/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	     3.22

       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
		   delivered 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
		   abstract for every successful  delivering  recipe  it  pro-
		   cesses.

       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
		   resort.   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
		   basis) 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
		   defaults 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
		   removed  by	force  now.   If zero, then no timeout will be
		   used and procmail will wait forever until the  lockfile  is
		   removed;  if	 not  specified,  it defaults to 1024 seconds.
		   This variable is useful to prevent  indefinite  hangups  of
		   sendmail/procmail.  Procmail is immune to clock skew across
		   machines.

       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
		   delivering 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
		   together 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
		   rcfile.  Nesting is permitted and only limited  by  systems
		   resources (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
		   rcfile will	be  aborted  and  the  named  rcfile  started.
		   Unsetting  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
		   rcfile 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):

       ^	 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
       rcfile 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,
       recompiling  procmail with the desired value is currently the only cor-
       rect 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), binmail(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)