Explanation of drmm

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The page you're reading has details about the drmm shell script. The page Delayed Removal: drmm gives an overview of this script. Here is the drmm script (you might want to open it in a separate browser window). To install it, first see the Section Programs in This Book's Archive and create the file drmm.

drmm adds an X-Remove-After: header field like the one on the first line of this message:

X-remove-after: 6 may 1997
Date: Sun, Apr 20 20:22:09 MDT 1997
From: don_platt@iq.nvaoi.com
To: majordomo-workers@GreatCircle.COM
   ...
This field is a flag for a simple cron job that searches all messages in all folders for X-Remove-After: fields and removes them if they're dated today or before. The scan.drmm format file also shows this date.

The script needs a litte configuration to choose the version of echo in your shell or system; the lines are at the top. The rest of the script is fairly straightforward.

Here is the scan.drmm file. It's a scan format file that checks each message for an X-Remove-After: field (which marks a delayed-removal message). Otherwise, it's the same as the default MH scan format file. If you use drmm much, you may want to make this your default scan format file; to do that, put this entry in your MH profile:

scan: -form scan.drmm
Or, you can make a shell alias or function, or a command version, to do that when you want it by typing a command like dscan.

Here is the drmmer script (again, you might want to open it in a separate browser window). It's just a shell loop that steps through all your folders, using pick to find removable messages and rmm to remove them. It gives a summary of what it's doing, like this:

                bug-mh+ has   74 messages (   1-  77); cur=  75; (others).
                drafts+ has   17 messages (   1-  26); cur=  26; (others).
                 inbox+ has   70 messages (   1-  79); cur=  59; (others).
drmmer removing: 
  81 R02/06 01/20 To:Xavier Viaud    Read my email next week?<<Xavier, I'll
  89 R02/06 01/21 Xavier Viaud       Re: Read my email next week?<<Jerry, n
                  jobs+ has   no messages            ;           (others).
pick: no messages in jobs
              jobs/dci+ has   17 messages (   1-  17); cur=  17; (others).
              jobs/ora+ has   68 messages (   1- 722); cur= 704; (others).
              ...
If you need help setting it up, see the Section Periodic Cleanup, Checking, etc. with cron and at.

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Last change $Date: 1999/10/10 05:14:05 $

This file first appeared in the updated online edition of the book MH & nmh: Email for Users & Programmers, by Jerry Peek. Copyright © 1997 by Jerry Peek. This file is freely available; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. For more information, see the file copying.htm.

Suggestions are welcome: Jerry Peek <jpeek@jpeek.com>