[Mailman-Users] Newbie comments/questions

[Mark Sapiro]

Peter Davis wrote:
>
>Mark Sapiro wrote:
>
>> Since by default, membership tests are done before
>> bounce_matching_headers, you could use bounce_matching_headers to hold
>> the spam and the test will be done after membership.
>>   
>Possibly, but I want to hold these messages to determine whether or not 
>they are truly spam.  I don't want to simply bounce them automatically.


That's what bounce_matching_headers does. Historically, it may have
bounced, but currently it holds despite the attribute name. It says:

  Hold posts with header value matching a specified regexp.
                      (Details for bounce_matching_headers)

and 'hold' is what it does.


>FAQ entry 3.32 
><http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq03.032.htp> says:
>
>_Don't_ try to match the whole line by enclosing your pattern between 
>beginning of line anchor ('^') and end of line anchor ('$').
>
>Should I ignore that?


I don't think that part of the FAQ entry is correct. Try it and report
back so we can update the FAQ if necessary.

The patterns in header_filter_rules are matched (using re.search)
against the entire message headers in MULTILINE mode. In MULTILINE
mode,using re.search, '^' matches the beginning of the string or
immediately following a newline and '$' matches the end of string or
immediately preceding a newline, so I think "^subject:\s*$" should
work. If not, try ^\r?subject:\s*$. In any case, the '^' was not the
critical change to your pattern; it is changing '\s' to '\s*' (which
will also allow '\r' at the end that is critical.

Note also, that bounce_matching_headers works differently than
header_filter_rules. bounce_matching_headers uses the first token to
define a header and then the remainder of the line is an re to search
in the values of all headers of that type.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan