sendmail, 4th Edition

Rule Set Names

Beginning with V8.7 sendmail, rule sets can be declared with numbers (as in the preceding section) or with more meaningful names. The form for a rule set name declaration looks like this:

Sname

The name can contain only ASCII alphanumeric characters and the underscore character. Any bad character causes that character and the characters following it to be silently ignored:

My_rule            ← good
My rule            ← bad, name is "My"

Case is recognized; that is, Myrule and MYRULE are different names. You can use any name that begins with an uppercase letter. Names that begin with a lowercase letter or an underscore character are reserved for internal use by sendmail.

There can be, at most, MAXRWSETS/2 named rule sets (MAX... on page 120). Each rule set that is declared beyond that amount causes sendmail to print the following error and ignore that rule set declaration:

name: too many named rulesets ( #  max)

When you declare a rule set name, sendmail associates a number with it. That number is selected by counting down from MAXRWSETS. That is, the first name is given the number MAXRWSETS-1, the second is given the number MAXRWSETS-2, and so on. Named rule sets can be used anywhere that numbered rule sets can be used.