[Mailman-Users] regexes in bounce_matching_headers

[Joern Nettingsmeier]

hello mailman users !


a number of questions about regexes in mailman:


in bounce_matching_headers, the "Header:" field is parsed separately
and is not part of the regex, right ?
(i.e. a line
.*SPAM
would _not_ have the effect of catching all mails that contain
"SPAM" in any of their headers ?)
this is not quite clear to me.


in the "details" page, it says that matches are case-insensitive.
however, my shouting filter
Subject: .*[A-Z ]{10,}
seems to work. how come ?


i'm desperately looking for a python-specific regex documentation.
i'm using a php manual (whose regexes are said to be
perl-compatible), but i seem to run into subtle problems. any
pointers ? if there is a concise source of info on this, i'd vote to
have a pointer included in the "details" page for all options that
take regexes. it would also be nice if that page mentioned to check
logs/config for trivial syntax errors after changing rules. i found
out the hard way :)
also, it would be nice to include a table somewhere which regex
features are available with a given python version. i found it quite
tedious to weed through the archives to find out, and the answers
were not always consistent.


i would like to weed out forwarded chain letters and jokecasts
("[Fwd: [Fwd: [Fwd:....", i.e. three or more forwards.
this does not work:
Subject: .*(fw.*){3,}
it catches even single forwards, obviously the .* is "greedy".
neither does this:
Subject: .*(fw.{1,5}){3,}
can you let me in on the correct way to do it ?


how do i catch more subtle administrivia, like subjects containing
both the words "list" and "help" in any order in any place ?


do the "forbidden_posters" and "posters" fields accept regexes ?
i have found contradictory answers in the archive.


does anyone have a tried and tested "thou shalt not reply to
digests" filter that i could rip off ?


plus i would really appreciate if some people with more elaborate
spam filters could posts theirs here with a very short description
on what they do. perhaps if we compile a bunch of useful examples, i
could write them up nicely and forward them to the mailman folks to
be included as documentation in the next release.


DISCLAIMER: i don't know python, and i have started to learn regexes
about 2 weeks ago. i'm just a stupid list admin. the problem is,
with spam and bullshit levels ever-increasing, most of us part-time
admins are forced to deal with filtering and other arcane stuff
without really being prepared, which is why i'm nagging for
examples...


best regards, and many thanks in advance,

jörn


would you mind cc:ing me personally ? i follow mailman-users through
the archive at the moment, and there's quite a lag probably.


--
Watch out where the huskies go and don't you eat
the yellow snow !
	- Frank Zappa