On Wed, 19 Jan 2000, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
> Instead of trying to make -R fancier and fancier, it might be useful
> instead to build a stand alone program on analogy to the pick command of
> MH.
I don't intend to make it any fancier!
> The program, which I'm calling exipick for want of a better name, would
> have some expression language (to be determined) and would simply echo
> the MIDs of those messages in the queue which matched the expression, so
>
> exim -M `exipick SOME-EXPRESSION`
>
> might be a typical usage.
I can see an advantage over -R in that you could use other options such
as -Mrm, -Mg, etc as well as -M, but:
What do you want to be in the expression? In other words, which criteria
do you want to be able to apply to a message? Remember that Exim stores
only the top-level addresses (except after one delivery attempt with
"once" set on a mailing list). There is no possibility of
exipick "the messages that need to be sent to host x"
because Exim doesn't have that information. (It does have the
information about which messages have *tried* to send to host x and
failed - as a hint (not 100% reliable) - but a message could be sitting
on the queue and not yet have tried (e.g. as a result of queue-only
because system busy).)
> I've put things on the wishlist before. But I promise, if this were
> developed I really would use it. :-)
The contents of the -H file are documented. That's all the information
that Exim has - and the pick program would have to scan the spool
directory and read every -H file, of course.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
