Sendmail, 3rd Edition

Process-Specified Addresses

The sendmail rule-testing mode has always had the ability to test individual rule sets, but prior to V8.7 sendmail, rule sets could be specified only by number. Beginning with V8.7, rule sets can also be specified by name. Prior to V8 sendmail, rule set 3 was always called first, even if you did not specify it.^[5]

Syntax

The > prompt expects rule sets and addresses to be specified like this:

> ident,ident,ident ...   address

Each ident is a rule set name or number. When there is more than one rule set, they must be separated from each other by commas (with no spaces between them).

For numbered rule sets, the number must be in the range of 0 through the highest number allowed. A number that is too large causes sendmail to print the following two errors:

bad rule set number (maxmax) 
Undefined rule setnumber

A rule set whose number is below the maximum but that was never defined will act as though it was defined but lacks rules.

Named rule sets must exist in the symbol table. If the name specified was never defined, the following error is printed:

Undefined rule set ident

If any rule set number in the comma-separated list of rule sets is omitted (e.g., ident,,ident), sendmail interprets the second comma as part of the second identifier, thus producing this error:

Undefined rule set ,identifier

The address is everything following the first whitespace (space and tab characters) to the end of the line. If whitespace characters appear anywhere in the list of rule sets, ...