[Mailman-Users] regexes in bounce_matching_headers

[Joern Nettingsmeier]

hello !

i sent the messsage below earlier today, not realizing that
mailman-users is a closed list.
now i have subscribed, and i'm resending the message below.
sorry if any duplicates get through.

Joern Nettingsmeier wrote:
> 
> hello mailman users !
> 
> a number of questions about regexes in mailman:
> 
> in bounce_matching_headers, the "Header:" field is parsed separately
> and is not part of the regex, right ?
> (i.e. a line
> .*SPAM
> would _not_ have the effect of catching all mails that contain
> "SPAM" in any of their headers ?)
> this is not quite clear to me.
> 
> in the "details" page, it says that matches are case-insensitive.
> however, my shouting filter
> Subject: .*[A-Z ]{10,}
> seems to work. how come ?
> 
> i'm desperately looking for a python-specific regex documentation.
> i'm using a php manual (whose regexes are said to be
> perl-compatible), but i seem to run into subtle problems. any
> pointers ? if there is a concise source of info on this, i'd vote to
> have a pointer included in the "details" page for all options that
> take regexes. it would also be nice if that page mentioned to check
> logs/config for trivial syntax errors after changing rules. i found
> out the hard way :)
> also, it would be nice to include a table somewhere which regex
> features are available with a given python version. i found it quite
> tedious to weed through the archives to find out, and the answers
> were not always consistent.
> 
> i would like to weed out forwarded chain letters and jokecasts
> ("[Fwd: [Fwd: [Fwd:....", i.e. three or more forwards.
> this does not work:
> Subject: .*(fw.*){3,}
> it catches even single forwards, obviously the .* is "greedy".
> neither does this:
> Subject: .*(fw.{1,5}){3,}
> can you let me in on the correct way to do it ?
> 
> how do i catch more subtle administrivia, like subjects containing
> both the words "list" and "help" in any order in any place ?
> 
> do the "forbidden_posters" and "posters" fields accept regexes ?
> i have found contradictory answers in the archive.
> 
> does anyone have a tried and tested "thou shalt not reply to
> digests" filter that i could rip off ?
> 
> plus i would really appreciate if some people with more elaborate
> spam filters could posts theirs here with a very short description
> on what they do. perhaps if we compile a bunch of useful examples, i
> could write them up nicely and forward them to the mailman folks to
> be included as documentation in the next release.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: i don't know python, and i have started to learn regexes
> about 2 weeks ago. i'm just a stupid list admin. the problem is,
> with spam and bullshit levels ever-increasing, most of us part-time
> admins are forced to deal with filtering and other arcane stuff
> without really being prepared, which is why i'm nagging for
> examples...
> 
> best regards, and many thanks in advance,
> 
> jörn
> 
> would you mind cc:ing me personally ? i follow mailman-users through
> the archive at the moment, and there's quite a lag probably.
> 
> --
> Watch out where the huskies go and don't you eat
> the yellow snow !
>         - Frank Zappa

--
Watch out where the huskies go and don't you eat
the yellow snow !
	- Frank Zappa