Re: procmail and regular expressions

[robertb@xxxxxxxxx (robert)]

 > From: Jerry Feldman <gaf@xxxxxxxxx>
 > Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2002 10:12:51 -0500
 >
 > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
 > Hash: SHA1
 > 
 > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
 > 
 > Many of the mailman based lists use [xxx] in the subject lines:
 > Subject: [iPAQ] a subject
 > or 
 > Subject: Re: [iPAQ] a subject
 > 
 > I have a rule and condition for both of these constructs:
 > 	* ^Subject:.Re:.\[iPAQ\]
 > This matches the reply in the normal case. 
 > 
 > This works fine. Note that the left and right square brackets must be 
 > escaped.
 > The problem is when I get a subject such as:
 > Subject: Re: [Gpe] Re: [iPAQ] GPE - GNU PDA Environment
 > 
 > My condition for that should match is:
 > 	* ^Subject:*\[iPAQ\]
 > 
 > Note that the leading asterisk is a flag to procmail, so the RE passed to 
 > egrep would be:
 > "^Subject:*\[iPAQ\]"
 > 
 > I have not tested this by manually running egrep, but it should work. 
 > What this ERE shoudl mean is:
 > The line starts with "Subject:" followed by 0 or more characters until the 
 > '[iPAQ]'.
 > 
 > It's got to be something so simple, what am I missing. I've been doing REs 
 > and EREs for 20 years.

I assume that you resolved this?  In any case, you want

^Subject:.*\[iPAQ\]

not

^Subject:*\[iPAQ\]

 > - -- 
 > Jerry Feldman <gaf@xxxxxxxxx>
 > Boston Linux and Unix user group