sendmail, 4th Edition

Configuration-File Definitions

When sendmail reads the configuration file, macros that are declared in that file are assigned values. The configuration-file command that declares macros begins with the letter D. There can be only one macro command per line. The form of the D macro configuration command is:

DXtext

The symbolic name of the macro (here, X) is a single-character or a multicharacter name (Macro Names on page 790):

DXtext              ← single-character name X
D{XXX}text          ← multicharacter name XXX

The symbolic name must immediately follow the D with no intervening space. The value that is given to the macro is the text, consisting of all characters beginning with the first character following the name and including all characters up to the end of the line. Any indented lines that follow the definition are joined to that definition. When joined, the newline and indentation characters are retained. Consider the following three configuration lines:

DXsometext
        moretext
        moretext
    ↑
   tabs

These are read and joined by sendmail to form the following text value for the macro named X:

sometext\n\tmoretext\n\tmoretext

Here, the notation \n represents a newline character, and the notation \t represents a tab character.

If text is missing, the value assigned to the macro is that of an empty string; that is, a single byte that has a value of zero.

If both the name and the text are missing, the following error is printed, and that D configuration line is ignored:

configfile: line num: Name required for macro/class ...