harvey/sys/man/6/rewrite

.TH REWRITE 6
.SH NAME 
rewrite \- mail rewrite rules
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B /mail/lib/rewrite
.SH DESCRIPTION
.IR Mail (1)
uses rewrite rules to convert mail destinations into
commands used to dispose of the mail.
Each line of the file 
.F /mail/lib/rewrite
is a rule.
Blank lines and lines beginning with
.B #
are ignored.
.PP
Each rewriting rule consists of (up to) 4 strings:
.TF pattern
.TP
.I pattern
A regular expression in the style of
.IR regexp (6).
The
.I pattern
is applied to mail destination addresses.
The pattern match is case-insensitive
and must match the entire address.
.TP
.I type
The type of rule; see below.
.TP
.I arg1
An
.IR ed (1)
style replacement string, with
.BI \e n
standing for the text matched by the
.IR n th
parenthesized subpattern.
.TP
.I arg2
Another
.IR ed (1)
style replacement string.
.PD
.PP
In each of these fields the substring
.B \es
is replaced by the login id of the
sender and the substring
.B \el
is replaced by the name of the local machine.
.PP
When delivering a message,
.I mail
starts with the first rule and continues down the list until a pattern
matches the destination address.
It then performs one of the following actions depending on the
.I type
of the rule:
.TF alias
.TP
.B >>
Append the mail to the file indicated by expanding
.IR arg1 ,
provided that file appears to be a valid mailbox.
.TP
.B |
Pipe the mail through the command formed from concatenating the
expanded
.I arg1
and
.IR arg2 .
.TP
.B alias
Replace the address by the address(es) specified
by expanding
.I arg1
and recur.
.TP
.B translate
Replace the address by the address(es) output by the
command formed by expanding
.I arg1
and recur.
.PD
.PP
.I Mail
expands the addresses recursively until each address has matched a
.B >>
or
.B |
rule or until the recursion depth indicates a rewriting loop
(currently 32).
.PD
.PP
If
.IR mail (1)
is called with more than one address and
several addresses match
.B |
rules and result in the same
expanded
.IR arg1 ,
the message is delivered to all those addresses
by a single command,
composed by concatenating the common expanded
.I arg1
and each expanded
.IR 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
.PP
.EX
   ([^!]*\.bell-labs\.com)!(.*)  |  "/mail/lib/qmail '\es' 'net!\e1'" "'\e2'"
.EE
.PP
if user
.B presotto
runs the command
.PP
.EX
   % mail plan9.bell-labs.com!ken plan9.bell-labs.com!rob
.EE
.PP
there will follow only one execution of the command
.PP
.EX
   /mail/lib/qmail presotto net!plan9.bell-labs.com ken rob
.EE
.PP
Here
.B /mail/lib/qmail
is an
.IR rc (1)
script used for locally queuing remote mail.
.PP
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
.B mail
and is run by
.BR $user ,
the command will print an error and deposit the message in
.BR /mail/box/$user/dead.letter .
If the command is called
.BR rmail ,
usually because it was invoked to deliver mail arriving over the network,
the message will be returned to the sender.  The returned message will
appear to have been sent by user
.BR postmaster .
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.IR mail (1)