Re: [Nmh-workers] Forward/backward references in mail-aliases file

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Bob,

I agree the man page example doesn't seem to match the page's
definition, but I think the example and the explanation that follows is
wrong.

    $ sed 4q ~/mail/aliases
    x1: x2
    x2: address@hidden
    x3: address@hidden
    x4: x3
    $
    $ ali | grep '^x[1-4]:'
    x1: address@hidden
    x2: address@hidden
    x3: address@hidden
    x4: x3
    $

x1 is a forward reference and gets fully expanded.
x4 is a backward reference and does not.

I'm confused by mh-alias(5) saying

    In match, a trailing “*” on an alias will match just about anything
    appropriate.

What `match'?  mh-format(5)'s function match()?  No, it seems to mean
the match that's done to find the alias definition.

And then the example you quoted ends

    news.*: news

but that isn't explained in the following text.  A brief experiment:

    $ sed 2q ~/mail/aliases
    news: oldnews
    news.*: news
    $ ali news
    oldnews
    $ ali news.
    news
    $ ali news.foo
    news
    $

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy