reformail — E-mail reformatting tool
reformail -s command [option...]
reformail -D len filename
reformail -x header:...
reformail -X header:...
reformail [options...]
The reformail program reads a message on standard input, reformats it in some way, and writes the message to standard output:
The -s option splits the mbox-formatted mailbox file on
standard input into
individual messages.
An external program is executed for each
message. The contents of each individual message will be provided to the
external program on standard input.
If the FILENO environment variable is set to a number,
reformail will consecutively increment
FILENO
each time the program is executed for each individual
message.
If FILENO is not set, it's initial value will be "000".
If FILENO is set to a non-numeric value,
FILENO will remain unchanged.
The -D option implements a simple way to delete duplicate
messages in incoming mail. filename is a file that
will be approximately 'len' bytes long.
This file will be used by
reformail to save message IDs seen in
recent mail.
reformail reads the message on standard input.
If the message has a Message-ID: header that's already in
the cache file,
reformail terminates with the exit code set to 0. Otherwise,
reformail terminates with the exit code set to 1.
The -x and -X options extract the indicated
headers from the message, and print them to standard output. Multiple
-x and -X options can be specified at
the same time, and may be intermixed.
The -x option extracts and prints the contents of the header.
The -X option prints the name of the header as well.
In all other situations, reformail copies the message on its standard input to its standard output, reformatting the message as follows:
Append a custom header to the message if this
header does not already exist. If the header is either
Message-ID: or
Resent-Message-ID: and the value is empty,
reformail generates
a (hopefully) unique message ID for you.
Append a custom header to the message even if this
header already exists. If the header is
either Message-ID: or
Resent-Message-ID:
and the value is empty, reformail generates
a (hopefully) unique message ID for you.
Concatenate multi-line headers. Headers split on multiple lines are combined into a single line.
n
If n is 1, each line will be terminated with CRLF.
If n is 0
(default), each line will be terminated with LF.
reformail reads a
message with either line terminator, and will force the message to have
the specified line termination.
Remove the "From_" line from the message, if it's
there.
Add the "From_" line to the message, if it's not there.
reformail will attempt to generate the
"From_" line from any
Errors-To:, Return-Path:, or
From: headers in the message.
"root" will be used
if
reformail is unable to determine the return address.
header: value'
Appends a custom header to the message. If this
header already exists it is renamed by prepending "Old-"
to the name of
the header.
header: value'Append a custom header to the message. If this header already exists in the message, the old header is completely removed. If the value is empty, any existing header is completely removed, and nothing gets appended.
After generating an auto-reply header using the -r option,
keep the
contents of the message itself in the auto-reply.
When both -r and -k options are used, the
-p option can be
used to change the quoting prefix for each line from its default value of
"> ".
When both -r and -k options are used, the
-p option is
used to specify the salutation that begins the contents of the message.
See AUTOREPLIES below.
Generates headers for an auto-reply to this message. This option
can be used to create replies to both E-mail and Usenet messages
(reformail created both the
In-Reply-To: and References: headers).
When
generating replies to Usenet messages, you'll probably have to always use
the -t option also.
Use user-generated headers in order to determine the return address
for the -r option. Otherwise, reformail
uses machine generated headers.
Rename the indicated header.
If this header occurs multiple times in the message, remove all occurrences except the first one.
If this header occurs multiple times in the message, remove all occurrences except the last one.
The -r option generates a set of headers for an automatic
reply to the message, instead of producing just a reformatted copy of the
message.
As an enhancement, the -r option is smart enough to be able
to properly generate an auto-reply to either an E-mail message, or a Usenet
message ( reformail
creates both a In-Reply-To: and
References: header).
The To:
header is set to the apparent sender of the message. To determine
the sender of the message, reformail prefers to look at
machine-generated headers, such a
Errors-To:and Return-Path:,
instead of user-generated headers, such as
From: or Reply-To:.
The -t option makes reformail use
user-generated headers instead of
machine-generated headers.
The -ra option copies To: headers from the
original message into the auto-reply.
The -rA option copies To: and
Cc: headers.
Normally, the contents of the original message are removed. The
-k option
copies the contents of the original message, which each line prefixed by
"> ".
Use the -p option to specify a different prefix.
The contents of the message are preceded by a salutation specified by the
-P option. If not specified, the salutation defaults to
"%F writes:%n".
Within the salutation, each occurrence of
% followed by another character is replaced
by some information from the original message, as follows:
Replaced by the contents of the X-Newsgroup: header in
the original message.
Replaced by the contents of the Date: header in the
original message.
Replaced by the E-mail address of the sender of the original message.
Replaced by the name of the sender of the original message. If no name was given, the E-mail address is used.
Replaced by the contents of the Message-ID: header in
the original message.
%n will cause reformail to insert a line break here.
Replaced by the contents of the Newsgroups: header in
the original message.
Replaced by the contents of any Subject: header in the
original message.
For the -a, -A, and -I
options, a space after the header name and the colon is
considered to be a non-empty field.
Do not provide the same header to more than one family of header-modifying
options, such as -u/-U and
-a/-A. Doing so yields unpredictable
results.
It's better to run reformail several times (use a pipe,
perhaps).