autoreply - How to ???

[Kenneth Almquist]

chip at ateng.ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
> According to bjorn at sysadm.UUCP (Bjorn Satdeva):
>> I need a good method to set up automagically reply with a preset
>> messages to incomming mail on a few special accounts.
>
> The "deliver" program, recently posted to comp.sources.unix and currently
> at patchlevel eight, should be able to handle this.
>
> [Chip then gives a sample user delivery file.]

The proposed script has the problem that it blindly replies to any mail,
and can thus get into an infinite loop if a mailer problems develop or if
someone else is running the same script.  A simple fix is to only reply
to the *first* piece of mail from an individual:

	# User delivery file for auto-reply.

	autoreply=/u/myname/autoreply

	echo "$1"               # Always deliver normally

	case $SENDER in
	*!*)
		if fgrep -x "$SENDER" $autoreply > /dev/null 2>&1
		then	:
		else	mail "$SENDER" <<-EOF
				Subject: Automatic reply
				To: $SENDER

				This is an automatic reply.  Blah, blah.
			EOF
			echo "$SENDER" >> $autoreply
		;;
	esac

Kenneth Almquist