Re: [exim] Wishlist item: once_repeat_daily

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Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: V. T. Mueller, Continum
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] Wishlist item: once_repeat_daily
[Answering several postings by different people.]

> Imagine a first mail from a to be at 10.30 pm. A vacation
> mail is sent back, since b is out of the office.
> The next morning 8 am, a is messy and forgets about b being
> away, sending an important email to b. There will be no
> autoreply sent, since 12h have not passed yet.


> But here again, when should the 'day' begin? At 7:00 AM local time,
> 8:00 AM local time?


These two comments neatly demonstrate the "cultural" problem that we
have in this thread. Every culture is going to be different. I don't
think it makes sense to try to build anything along these lines into
Exim.

Take the first comment. Some people would argue that this is just the
fault of person a, and it's their problem. Others might argue that if
your people are all so stupid, you should set once_repeat=1s so that a
reply is sent every time.

> OK, apparently I'm feeling particularly perverse this afternoon, but since
> once_repeat is expanded you can simulate this behaviour yourself:


Excellent! I'd forgotten about the expansion. It does indeed mean you
can control the repeats exactly if you want to.

> You could also just set a cron job that runs at say 5:00 or 6:00 AM
> local time and deletes the vacation DB's from the users directories,
> or where ever it is that you keep them. Then you can keep the more
> stnadard 24h for once repeat.


Indeed, that's another way to do it.

Regards,
Philip

-- 
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@???      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.