Procmail

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The correct title of this article is procmail. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

procmail

Author:	Stephen R. van den Berg
Developer:	Philip A. Guenther
Initial release:	December 7, 1990
Latest release:	3.22 / September 10, 2001
OS:	Any Unix-like
Platform:	Cross-platform
Use:	Mail filter
License:	GPL or Artistic License
Website:	http://www.procmail.org/

Procmail is a mail delivery agent (MDA) or mail filter, a program to process incoming emails on a computer, widely used on Unix systems. It is typically invoked from an MTA like Sendmail; this makes the mail processing event-driven. The companion-tool formail allows procmail to be used in batch-processing on mail that already is in your mailbox.

Common operations carried out with procmail include filtering and sorting of emails into different folders according to keywords in from, to, subject, text of the mail, or sending autoreplies, but more sophisticated operations are also possible.

A common practice is to let procmail call an external spam filter program, such as SpamAssassin. This method can allow for spam to be filtered or even deleted.

[edit] Further reading

The Procmail Companion, Martin McCarthy, Addison-Wesley, S. 256, November 2001, ISBN 0-201-73790-6
Procmail, Chris Lindsey, S. 325, April 2001, ISBN 1-56592-540-8

[edit] Examples

DROPPRIVS=yes
DEFAULT=$HOME/Maildir/
MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir/

# Pass mail through spamc, the interface to SpamAssassin

:0fw
| /usr/bin/spamc

# Move mail marked as spam to a mailbox named '.Trash/'

:0:
* ^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*
.Trash/

:0:
* ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
.Trash/