Re: Just shoot me now

[Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc>]

On Wed, Dec 22 2010, Tommy Kelly wrote:

> Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> writes:
>
>> Because [ and ] are not word characters.  See
>> nnmail-split-fancy-syntax-table.
>
> Thanks Andreas. Unfortunately that 6,500 line variable, consisting
> mostly of pairs of parens enclosing numbers, is as clear as mud :-)
[...]
> 5. Begin building more simple splits then stumble on
> "\\[stuff\\]". Splitting isn't as keen on \\[ as it is on, say, \\. .
> 6. Told that nnmail-split-fancy-syntax-table is the clue
> 7. C-h v on that variable. Look. Puke. Look again.
> 8. Google for "emacs lisp syntax table"
> 9. Fall pretty much at the first fence on being told that a syntax table
> is a "char-table" about which I know very little
> 10. Start reading about what a char-table is
> 11. Consider reading about "aref" and "aset" since part of the basic
> description of char-tables mentions those
> 12. Stop and think "Seriously!? All this Just To Split My Mail!?"

Right, much too complicated.  The solution is described in the manual:

,----[ (info "(gnus)Fancy Mail Splitting") ]
|    Normally, VALUE in these splits must match a complete _word_
| according to the fundamental mode syntax table.  In other words, all
| VALUE's will be implicitly surrounded by `\<...\>' markers, which are
| word delimiters.  Therefore, if you use the following split, for
| example,
| 
|      (any "joe" "joemail")
| 
| messages sent from `joedavis@foo.org' will normally not be filed in
| `joemail'.  If you want to alter this behavior, you can use any of the
| following three ways:
| 
|   1. You can set the `nnmail-split-fancy-match-partial-words' variable
|      to non-`nil' in order to ignore word boundaries and instead the
|      match becomes more like a grep.  This variable controls whether
|      partial words are matched during fancy splitting.  The default
|      value is `nil'.
| 
|      Note that it influences all VALUE's in your split rules.
| 
|   2. VALUE beginning with `.*' ignores word boundaries in front of a
|      word.  Similarly, if VALUE ends with `.*', word boundaries in the
|      rear of a word will be ignored.  For example, the VALUE
|      `"@example\\.com"' does not match `foo@example.com' but
|      `".*@example\\.com"' does.
| 
|   3. You can set the INVERT-PARTIAL flag in your split rules of the
|      `(FIELD VALUE ...)' types, aforementioned in this section.  If the
|      flag is set, word boundaries on both sides of a word are ignored
|      even if `nnmail-split-fancy-match-partial-words' is `nil'.
|      Contrarily, if the flag is set, word boundaries are not ignored
|      even if `nnmail-split-fancy-match-partial-words' is non-`nil'.
|      (New in Gnus 5.10.7)
`----

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
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