How does one utilize the filter file to mail a file, before it deletes
the mail from the recipient?  I have a file ".warning" in my ".elm"
directory, and I would like it to be sent to a certain person
who's loginid at emuvax I will enter in the 1st (hopefully) response.
Thank you for you help.  Thanks in advance are always a good thing.

51 responses total.

The loginid is "ENG_ST712528@emuvax.emich.edu"
Thanks again.

If'n I remember correctly, you can tell the program to "execute"
a Unix program when receving mail from someone.  How to combine
that with the deletion, I'm not sure.  And since SOMEONE deleted
the on-line help files, I'll have to FTP them and look it up.
Hold on...

Don't worry.  I'm not going anywhere until July.

Okay, I tracked down the info, fooled around with my filter-rules
file, got some help from nestene, and here's what ya do:

        if (to = "userid") then execute "elm userid < /u/vidar/.elm/.warning"
        if (to = "userid") then delete

(Where, of course, you replace userid with the address of whoever.)

Upon receiving the mail, it first calls the elm program to send
a copy of your .warning file.  The next filter rule zaps it.
Note that you can't combine the two functions into one filter
rule, but there's nothing wrong with two rules that use the same
conditional.  Got all that?  >8)

Cool!

Evil!

Okay, so (let me get this straight), this method sends a message
to a particular user, telling them their message is rejected or
somesuch, and then deletes the message?
  Hmmm....

(or as power might say: "Sexy!")

Re #4: Where do you put those lines?  And where can I get
full documentation?

Oops, sorry, I forgot that people besides vidar might be
reading this...  >8)

These intructions go in your .elm directory, in a file named
filter-rules.  There's a bunch of other stuff to do, too.
The Elm documentation (which USED to be online on Grex) can
be FTP'ed from ftp.mcs.com, in /mcsnet.users/dattier/elmguides

Okay, everyone...let's all put copies of the elm docs in our home
directories!  NOT!

Could one of the fw's download these files and let us know where they
end up?  I'd like to read them when I get a chance.

Hm.  I'm the fair witnesses for this conference, but I'll defer to whoever
wants to download this thing and put it somewhere readable.

I'm not sure I have it exactly correct.  Do both commands need be on
seperate lines, or is one continious sentence okay?

Never mind.  I fixed it.

Seperate lines.  I checked your filter-rules and you've got
it right.

Good.  I hope you didn't read ".warning", it's a real nasty file
directed towards the recipient.

Ooh, you've scared me off!  >8)

The files are available in /u/carl/elm_help.

Now, can someone tell me how to read a .gz file?

Re#18: Do you mean that or are you being sarcastic?  It's kinda hard to
tell in writing.

Re#19: Sorry, nope.

This is from /usr/local/inet/README

To conserve disk space, many files in this area have been compressed with GNU
project's compress program, gzip.  Detailed information is available.  Type

man gzip

Briefly, if a filename ends with .gz, for example, ftp-faq.txt.gz, type:

zcat ftp-faq.txt          -display file for text capture

zmore ftp-faq.txt         -display file one screen full at a time; use the
                           space bar for the next screen full

Good as far as it goes.  A couple of added points: to uncompress it
permanently (if you need to), use gunzip.  If it's something like a tar
file that's been gzip'd, you may want to gunzip and untar in one step with
something like
zcat something.tar.gz | tar tvf -
(or pipe it through some other program).

Basically, .gz means that the file has been compressed by the Gnu Zip
utility.  Grex is set up so you can say "uncompress foo" to uncompress
a file called foo.gz into a file called foo.  You can also use Grex's
zcat program to look at the contents of a compressed file without having
to uncompress it.  To compress a file named foo, use the command
"gzip -9v foo".

These utilities are based on the much more commonly found commands:
compress, uncompress, and zcat, which deal with files with .Z extensions.
Grex's uncompress and zcat programs have been replaced by Gnu utilities
that can handle several different formats.  Grex's compress program is
the standard built-in version.

Re 20 - If you see a >8), 100% chance I'm being sarcastic.

popcorn says:
 Grex's uncompress and zcat programs have been replaced by Gnu utilities
 that can handle several different formats.

Out of curiosity, what file formats can the standard compress program on
most unix machines not handle?  Is there any other reasons for the
standard compression program to be replaced by the gnu version (such as
better compression ratio's)?  Is there a dos version of the gnu
compression program that I can use so that when I go to download files, I
can compess them first?  Do we still have the unix standard version of
compress around?  Uh...

I guess that that is it for now...

The standard Unix version of compress uses its own format and no other
formats.  The gnu compression utilities handle several formats.  Also,
the gnu utilities are supposed to work faster and compress things tighter.
I *think* we've got a compression program that is compatible with the DOS
zip program, but hopefully someone else has more info about that.
Grex is running the standard Unix "compress" program -- it's all the others
that are changed.

Unless I get a request otherwise, I'll delete those files in a few
weeks.  Most are techinical and are about installing the program.

The user's guide has some good things for users after the long
introduction.

Yes, gzip is much more versatile than compress.  There is a DOS version
available.

(gzip is pretty new.  The reason it exists at all is that the GNU folks
discovered that compress uses a patented algorithm, so they developed
their own, hopefully patent-free, compression program.  It is fast
replacing compress as the standard in the Unix world.)

Gzip is also a *much* better compressor than compress. I typically get
30% better compression from gzip.

Point of Inquiry to the Speaker:
        Why are the messages allowed into my mbox, no longer accounted for
in my "filterlog" and "filtersum" files?  Should I just delete the files,
and let them fill themselves?

(Ah yes, if the mail discussion isn't finished, we should get back to that
and can the drift.)

No, I'm not done with drift!!  I've been compressing with "gzip foo" and
popcorn just told me to "gzip -9v foo".  What's the difference?

zip and unzip are available on grex.  They work on .zip files which
DOS people are used to manipulating with pkzip and pkunzip.  For more
info, type !zip and !unzip at the next couple of prompts...

Time to paste the compression thread into a new item?

One more drift response: There are PKZIP- & PKUNZIP-compatible programs,
as someone asked or suggested.  They are zip and unzip.  If you're
planning to move a text file to DOS from here, or to unzip a DOS text file
here, there are carriage-return-conversion options.  And if you zip files
here, you should make sure the filenames are legal DOS filenames if you
plan to PKUNZIP them.  Typing zip or unzip with no arguments gives you
a list of options.

Jeff slipped in.

Jeff, the 9 option on gzip indicates slowest-but-most-compact compression,
and the v options says it should tell you what it's doing.  The compression
options run from 1 to 9, with 6 being the default.  (This is from the man,
not from any further acquaintance.)

And one afterthought on zip/unzip: on DOS you will need PKUNZIP 2.04g or later
to extract files from these.  (As far as I know, 2.04g is still the latest,
but I'm sure later versions would also work.)  Earlier rev 2 versions might
also work but had some serious bugs.  The rev 1 versions are guaranteed not
to work.

Read My Cyberspace: No More Drifting!

(This is *vidar* objecting to drift?  Or was that supposed to be sarcasm?)

I'm objecting to drift.  But only in this item.

Re 30 - I'm not sure I understand the question.  Personally,
I just zap those two files every time I log off, and otherwise
ignore them.

Vidar - you might take the > signs out of your filter-rules file. 
You need the < signs, but not the > signs.

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