Re: possible strange idea about hierarchical lists

[Ted Zlatanov <teodor.zlatanov@divine.com>]

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prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:

> How about this:
> (let* ((recipients '(("foo@bar" . "Name <foo@bar>")
>                      ("baz@quux" . "None <baz@quux>")))
>        (plain-addrs (mapcar 'car recipients))
>        (gnus-hierarchical-lists '(("baz@quux" "foo@bar")))
>        sublists recip)
>   (while plain-addrs
>     (setq sublists (assoc (car plain-addrs) gnus-hierarchical-lists)
>           plain-addrs (cdr plain-addrs))
>     (when sublists
>       (setq sublists (cdr sublists))
>       (while sublists
>         (setq recip (assoc (car sublists) recipients)
>               sublists (cdr sublists))
>         (if recip
>             (setq recipients (delq recip recipients)))))))
>
> Note that this is a different structure for gnus-hierarchical-lists.
> An entry (A B C) means that A contains B and C.  (No further
> relationship between B and C is implied.)  So if A appears in the
> recipient list, then B and C will be removed from it, if present.  If
> B and C have sublists of their own, they should get their own
> top-level entries in gnus-hierarchical-lists.  In this case,
> gnus-hierarchical-lists says that messages to baz@quux also go to
> foo@bar, so foo@bar is removed from the recipient list.

That looks fine to me.

Kai, sorry for not following up to your very helpful message.  I was
unable to send e-mail to the ding list for a while due to server
problems.  I think Paul's suggestion is even better to make the user's
life simple, using a list instead of a cons cell.

I tried to put a patch into message.el, naming the variables
accordingly and simplifying things a bit.  I'm not sure if the
variable should go into the message-headers or the message-sending
group; also, I'm not sure if I defined the variable correctly with
defcustom (I tried the '(repeat sexp) type but that didn't work).  I
think the functional definition, at least, is correct (because Paul
wrote it :)

I did a diff -u, renaming the original message.el to
message-original.el because I don't have access to the CVS repository
(firewall issues, don't ask) to do a diff against it.

This is my first time submitting a patch, please let me know if I did
anything wrong.  It's also my first time writing more than 4 lines of
Lisp for a single purpose.

To test, define message-hierarchical-lists to be ("foo" "bar") and
then have "foo" and "bar" in your recipient list.  "bar" should be
removed.

I couldn't test - message-get-reply-headers was not invoked, according
to debug-on-entry.  I'm kind of puzzled by this.  I must be doing
something wrong.

Also, the message-hierarchical-lists should probably be generalized to
regular expressions for both the primary and secondary lists
(message-hierarchical-lists-regexps?).  I don't need this personally,
but perhaps someone else will find it useful.  Maybe when the string
exact matching is working.

Thanks
Ted


[-- Attachment #2: patch for message.el --]
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--- message-original.el	Fri Feb  1 16:07:38 2002
+++ message.el	Fri Feb  1 17:11:14 2002
@@ -1044,6 +1044,15 @@
   :type '(choice (const :tag "Always use primary" nil)
 		 regexp))
 
+(defcustom message-hierarchical-lists nil
+  "A list of hierarchical mailing list definitions.
+
+Inside each entry, the first address is the top list, everything after
+it are secondary addresses contained in the list.  The secondaries
+will be removed from the list of recipients when mail is prepared for
+delivery."
+  :group 'message-headers)
+
 (defcustom message-mail-user-agent nil
   "Like `mail-user-agent'.
 Except if it is nil, use Gnus native MUA; if it is t, use
@@ -4512,6 +4521,23 @@
       (let ((s recipients))
 	(while s
 	  (setq recipients (delq (assoc (car (pop s)) s) recipients))))
+
+      ;; remove hierarchical lists that are contained within each other,
+      ;; if message-hierarchical-lists is defined
+      (when message-hierarchical-lists
+	(let* ((plain-addrs (mapcar 'car recipients))
+	       sublists recip)
+	  (while plain-addrs
+	    (setq sublists (assoc (car plain-addrs) message-hierarchical-lists)
+		  plain-addrs (cdr plain-addrs))
+	    (when sublists
+	      (setq sublists (cdr sublists))
+	      (while sublists
+		(setq recip (assoc (car sublists) recipients)
+		      sublists (cdr sublists))
+		(if recip
+		    (setq recipients (delq recip recipients))))))))
+
       ;; Build the header alist.  Allow the user to be asked whether
       ;; or not to reply to all recipients in a wide reply.
       (setq follow-to (list (cons 'To (cdr (pop recipients)))))