Re: exim: misleading package description?

[Kurt Lieber <debian@kirpatrick.com>]

On Thursday 29 November 2001 11:22 am, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> That's something I've wondered about for a while...  I've found
> exim's .forward filtering to be more than adequate for anything I've
> ever wanted to do (and a lot more human-readable to boot), but you
> seem to be implying that it's less capable than procmail.  What can
> procmail do that exim can't?

I meant "cruel" in the sense that exim's filtering syntax is Shakespeare 
compared to procmail's butchery.

I'm not sure I understand all the differences between exim and procmail 
filtering, but here's my limited understanding:

* exim allows you to filter without changing the envelope sender -- not sure 
if procmail can do this.
* exim filtering is better at detecting (and preventing) duplicate messages 
among multiple users
* procmail can pipe messages to other programs and use the return code to do 
futher filtering.  Exim can pipe to external programs as well, but can't 
(AFAIK) use the return code in any way.

Basically, exim is set up to deliver messages, so its filtering is designed 
with message delivery as the ultimate goal.  Procmail is more of a swiss army 
knife and has a bit more flexibility.  The two are certainly not mutually 
exclusive -- one can augment the other.

BTW, I highly recommend the O'Reilly exim book if you're at all interested in 
learning more about exim.  I use it most/all of the time when I have exim 
questions.

hth

--kurt