Re: [Evolution] Creating advanced filters

[unattended box <paul murphy-eo5svjlg cool fr nf>]

On 2011-04-29, Nick S <nick sfx 1 gmail com> wrote:
> Would someone like to share examples of "pipe to program" and "run
> external program" options, in order to build advanced filters using
> scripting language.

For advanced filtering, nothing beats procmail.  It's a
special-purpose tool and language for this purpose.

If you want to use procmail, ideally you use fetchmail instead of
Evolution to retrieve the mail, and have fetchmail deliver to a mail
server like postfix, which then sends the message to procmail.  That's
a proper setup, but if you must use Evolution to retrieve the mail for
some reason, make your a filter that pipes all messages to a script,
and in that script put the line:

  formail -d -a "From " -s procmail

The '-a "From "' restores the envelope From header.  It's important
because Evolution drops the envelope From header ("from<space>"),
which causes a corrupt mbox.