Date: 19 Dec 2002 20:53:12 -0800 From: Ken McGlothlen <mcglk@artlogix.com> To: "Mxsmanic" <mxsmanic@hotmail.com> Cc: "FreeBSD Questions" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Getting Perl scripts to work as mail filters Message-ID: <86bs3h1ebr.fsf@ralf.artlogix.com> In-Reply-To: <OE70Cu2Wg0V261ZAbhR0000606f@hotmail.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0212191910480.61288-100000@wonkity.com> <OE70Cu2Wg0V261ZAbhR0000606f@hotmail.com>
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| Bloated in the sense of complexity. My script is one file; I install it by
| changing one line in /etc/mail/aliases. Procmail cannot compete with that.
It's . . . an illusory simplicity, I suspect. But that's okay; it's something
everyone has to learn once in a while. :) Procmail has some real advantages,
of course, but it's true that you don't *need* it to do what you want to do.
| I notice that all software tends to bloat over time.
Well, accusing procmail of bloat is . . . perhaps a bit unfounded. It's a
pretty specialized piece of software, and it hasn't tried to become a Swiss
Army Knife type of program.
| When I see a Web site that has a search engine just to search the FAQs, I
| know that there is a problem.
Yeah, but the problem might just be one's definition of "Frequently." :)
| It's actually much easier for me to write something and install it than it
| would be to spends days or weeks trying to install someone else's bloated
| software.
Uh . . .
# cd /usr/ports/mail/procmail
# make install
Significantly less than "days." Last time I checked, anyway. Maybe you're
running on a 33MHz '486, though. :)
| I'm sure something like Procmail has its place for enormously complicated
| situations that require enormously complicated solutions, but what I want to
| do is not in that category.
Actually, Procmail is useful in a wide variety of situations that require speed
and flexibility. I use it extensively to dump my mail into separate folders
for me, to pipe some mail through scripts, to automatically reject others. The
nice thing is that's it's all in one configuration file (.procmailrc), and
there's just not a lot else to worry about.
Seriously, you might want to look into this solution a little more before
giving up on it; it's a well-tested tool, and widely used. And it's not as
hard as you might think.
| Incidentally, I've managed to get my script to drop HTML from messages
| generated by Outlook Express. Now I'm just trying to handle the more general
| case of messages that are entirely in HTML: I want to change the HTML to
| plain text and then delete all the tags, leaving only whatever essential text
| remains.
http://search.cpan.org/author/RGARCIA/PerlIO-via-StripHTML-0.04/lib/PerlIO/via/StripHTML.pm
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