term% cat index.txt REWRITE(6) Games Manual REWRITE(6)
NAME
rewrite - mail rewrite rules
SYNOPSIS
/mail/lib/rewrite
DESCRIPTION
Mail(1) uses rewrite rules to convert mail destinations into commands
used to dispose of the mail. Each line of the file is a rule. Blank
lines and lines beginning with # are ignored.
Each rewriting rule consists of (up to) 4 strings:
pattern
A regular expression in the style of regexp(6). The pattern is
applied to mail destination addresses. The pattern match is
case-insensitive and must match the entire address.
type The type of rule; see below.
arg1 An ed(1) style replacement string, with \n standing for the text
matched by the nth parenthesized subpattern.
arg2 Another ed(1) style replacement string.
In each of these fields the substring \s is replaced by the login id of
the sender and the substring \l is replaced by the name of the local
machine.
When delivering a message, mail starts with the first rule and contin‐
ues down the list until a pattern matches the destination address. It
then performs one of the following actions depending on the type of the
rule:
>> Append the mail to the file indicated by expanding arg1, pro‐
vided that file appears to be a valid mailbox.
| Pipe the mail through the command formed from concatenating the
expanded arg1 and arg2.
alias Replace the address by the address(es) specified by expanding
arg1 and recur.
translate
Replace the address by the address(es) output by the command
formed by expanding arg1 and recur.
Mail expands the addresses recursively until each address has matched a
>> or | rule or until the recursion depth indicates a rewriting loop
(currently 32).
If mail(1) is called with more than one address and several addresses
match | rules and result in the same expanded arg1, the message is de‐
livered to all those addresses by a single command, composed by con‐
catenating the common expanded arg1 and each expanded arg2. This mail
bundling is performed to reduce the number of times the same message is
transmitted across a network. For example, with the following rewrite
rule
([^!]*.bell-labs.com)!(.*) | "/mail/lib/qmail '\s' 'net!\1'" "'\2'"
if user presotto runs the command
% mail plan9.bell-labs.com!ken plan9.bell-labs.com!rob
there will follow only one execution of the command
/mail/lib/qmail presotto net!plan9.bell-labs.com ken rob
Here /mail/lib/qmail is an rc(1) script used for locally queuing remote
mail.
In the event of an error, the disposition of the mail depends on the
name of the command executing the rewrite. If the command is called
mail and is run by $user, the command will print an error and deposit
the message in /mail/box/$user/dead.letter. If the command is called
rmail, usually because it was invoked to deliver mail arriving over the
network, the message will be returned to the sender. The returned mes‐
sage will appear to have been sent by user postmaster.
SEE ALSO
mail(1)
REWRITE(6)