Subject: Re: Auto reply

From: [email-masked] (Eric Black)
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 93 09:29:44 PDT

Tahir Dildar <[email-masked]> asked:
> Is it possible that by scanning a particular word like e.g. "HELP"
> Procmail can send a file named "help" present in my root directory to
> the person who sent me the mail, AUTOMATICALLY.

This may help you set up what you want.  I often have to travel for
extended periods, and it's not always possible for me to log into my
home machine to read email on a regular basis.  I use procmail to
forward email with the magic keyword "urgent" in the Subject: header
to me wherever I am.  A "vacation" message tells people about putting
"urgent" in the subject line if they need to get email to me quickly.
The reason I do this is that I don't necessarily want people to know
where I am (some of my consulting clients are competitors).

The way this is set up, it only looks in the Subject: header, but
changing the procmail recipe to scan the message body instead (or as
well) should be easy.  Adapting this to your particular requirements is
left as an exercise, since I see you're at an EDU site :-)

Relevant .procmailrc stuff:
------------------------------------->%-----------------------------------
OFFSITE=[email-masked]

# Forward urgent mail to me at my offsite address;
# afterward, continue processing it as normal
# The procmail pattern match may be case-insensitive, in which case
# this rule could be simplified...
:c
^Subject: .*[Uu][Rr][Gg][Ee][Nn][Tt]
| /usr/lib/sendmail $OFFSITE

# Use "vacation" to tell other people I'm not here
# To enable, un-comment the next two lines; to disable, comment them out
:0wc
| vacation -a ericb eric

# Fall off the end, mail gets put into $DEFAULT ...
------------------------------------->%-----------------------------------

Sample message in my .vacation.msg file:

	Subject: I'm out of town for a while
	From: eric (via the vacation program)
	I'm out of town until <return-date>.  Your mail regarding
	       "$SUBJECT"
	will be read when I return, or possibly at some unknown
	time before then if I get a chance to check for email.
	 
	If your message must be seen by me before I return,
	you can send it with the word "URGENT" in the subject header. 
	Such mail will be automatically forwarded to me so that 
	I see it sooner. 
	
	-Eric