Jeeves
Andrew Arensburger

Jeeves is a perl script that Dr. Rosenfeld uses to automatically sort his e-mail.


Distribution

audit.pl
This is a perl package distributed with MH. It has been hacked locally to reflect some of CfAR's idiosyncracies (look for comments beginning with "AA").
Jeeves
The Jeeves script itself.
MailFriends
This file serves as an example of the MailFriends file. The MailFriends file lists people whose mail should be treated specially. This sample file gives some examples, with comments.
.forward
This is a sample .forward file. Note that mail is still saved to the default mailbox. Delete this at your own risk.

To install this package, you will need a Perl programmer. The rules by which Jeeves sorts incoming mail are specific to Dr. Rosenfeld, and will almost certainly not apply to anyone else. It should, however, serve as a useful template to writing your own.

In particular, there is a bit of paranoia at the top, just before the &initialize() statement. The various routines that handle the message also try to be fairly paranoid.

Installation

Get all of the files mentioned above. Read them. Edit them to suit your taste. The biggest changes will probably be in Jeeves, where you'll get to rewrite the mail-handling rules to your liking.

Edit your .forward file appropriately. You'll almost certainly want to save mail to your system mailbox in addition to having Jeeves sort it, until you're 100% certain that it works the way you expect it to.

Personally, I think that all mail should go to some mailbox. Even the stuff you never want to see. You can always write a cron job to clean those mailboxes up, but if you delete something, and it then turns out to be important, that can be bad.

Disclaimer

This code is being provided as a public service, because Azriel and I think it might prove useful to other people. Andrew Arensburger, Azriel Rosenfeld and the Center for Automation Research hereby disclaim any losses or damages arising in any way from the use of this software.

Read and understand the code before you trust it! If you install this code and it winds up deleting all of your mail before you get a chance to read it, don't blame me! I'll just laugh.


Author: Andrew Arensburger (arensb@cfar.umd.edu)
Last updated $Date: 1997/07/18 08:44:36 $