Re: [exim] exim4.conf variable case sensitivity

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Author: Mike Brudenell
Date:  
To: exim-users
CC: Colin Waring
Subject: Re: [exim] exim4.conf variable case sensitivity
On 23 September 2015 at 15:51, Jeremy Harris <jgh@???> wrote:

> ... but his use case was in an ACL. Distinct from "being routed"
> (in all but the most abstruse cases).
>


A subtle distinction, I think really only recognisable by Exim developers
with their familiarity of extremely specific terminology. To me as a mere
mortal Sys Admin who configured and *uses* Exim I've always taken this to
mean "the address being fed in and processed" which includes the whole
process ACLs, routers and transports. (The Specification talks here about
when "an address is being routed" rather than "within a router".)

Are you saying here that the the $domain variable is only in lower case
within a router, and might contain original (mixed) case elsewhere such as
within ACLs?

Which would mean that when we want to do a lookup within a file whose name
is specified by including $domain — eg, /etc/exim4/$domain — then

- If we're doing this within an ACL we must not assume $domain is in
lower case and must force it to be using ${lc:…}, *but*
- If we're doing this within a router we can assume $domain is in lower
case and so use it directly?

If that's the case then that really is unpleasant. and there should be a
much clearer health warning in the Specification.

And we've had a lucky escape here: We do various lsearch lookups to check
for blocked sender addresses, recipient address, expand aliases, etc but to
date only within routers. (Phew!)

If this is indeed the case perhaps the original poster, Colin, might be
willing to file a bug report as you suggest? (As we've not experienced this
problem ourselves I'd be reluctant to file it myself as I don't have sample
scenarios to include in the report.)

Cheers,
Mike B-)

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