Re: help/subscribe

[Martin Janzen <janzen@idacom.hp.com>]

Paul Baclace writes:
>>It seems I perpetrated a vile and offensive error in sending a subscribe
>>request directly to the list.
>
>I don't get offended, I just save the subscribe/unsubscribe message
>in a special folder that I will use to train a learning algorithm
>to recognize these kinds of requests. [...]
>If anyone has suggestions for implementation that maximizes applicability
>(e.g., I could write a C program that reads stdin or a named file and 
>returns a status code), please let me know.

Since you mention stdin, I assume you're running UNIX.  In that case, it's
very easy to do this using awk; no C programming required.

To try this out, create a small awk program called subscribe.awk, which
contains one regular expression per "flavor" of subscribe request.  The
command in braces is executed if a match for that regexp is found:

  /[Pp]lease subscribe me/ {exit 1}
  /[Aa]d me to the/        {exit 1}
  /How .* subscribe/       {exit 1}
  [etc.]

Create or capture a suitable example message.  To test it:

  % awk -f subscribe.awk subscribe_message; echo $status
  1
  % awk -f subscribe.awk other_message; echo $status
  0

Or, you can use awk as a filter:

  % cat subscribe_message | awk -f subscribe.awk ; echo $status
  1
  % cat other_message | awk -f subscribe.awk ; echo $status
  0

Now, just wrap it in a shell script which responds with an appropriate
message (you can of course have subscribe.awk return a different exit
code depending on which regular expression is matched), and call the
shell script from your $HOME/.forward file, mail filter, or whatever.

-- 
Martin Janzen           janzen@idacom.hp.com