[Mailman-Users] Regexp topics

[Mark Sapiro]

Enrique Vega wrote:
> 
> On Dec 14, 2004, at 6:34 PM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
> 
>> Of course you could use a more elaborate regexp as well depending on
>> what you want, but however you enter it, it is just one regexp and the
>> newlines and other whitespace are ignored unless escaped or inside
>> character classes.
> 
> Your help was great! However, I have come to the conclusion that you 
> have to also add the "|" to the last keyword for it to also be 
> recognized, and then add some giberish for the final keyword that will 
> not be used. That seems to have worked for me.

I understand what you're saying above, but I don't understand why it 
would be the case. Don't argue with success I guess :-)

> On another note. How can I set up a topic to so that folks will NOT get 
> the topi? For instance, our mail list uses YAK or OT when off topic 
> discussions start. Some folks have complained in the past about off 
> topic discussions. I would like for these folks to have a way to pre 
> filter for OT and or YAK. Can you help me with the regexp to filter out 
> these two key words so folks who like the yak can get it, and folks who 
> don't will not get it?

You could define "OffTopic" as "\ ot\ |\ yak\ " or something similar 
(the "\ " is a space and is included so as not to match "ot" or "yak" 
when they are parts of other words. Anyway, the actual regexp might need 
to be more involved to really work well. For example, something like

[[( ](ot|yak)[]) ]

would match "[" or "(" or " " followed by "ot" or "yak" followed by "]" 
or ")" or " ".

If members could ask to NOT receive certain topics, they then could ask 
for "not OffTopic", but I don't think you can do that. I think the best 
one can do is subscribe to all topics of interest and maybe also choose 
to receive messages that don't match any topic.

The problem is that any time a new topic is added, each member who has 
done the above will then have to explicitly subscribe to the new topic 
to get those messages.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan