quick help on "Regular expressions"

[zimu]

hey guys!

trying to set up a mail filter and want to use regular expressions... i know they can be really advanced!

basically, i've been getting bombarded with junk mail which all have the exact same subject header:

Re: ab c news

where a, b and c are random characters- can include numbers, capital letters etc. but the spacing between characters is IDENTICAL.

i want to basically discard all messages that have the format above... anyone have any clue?

cheers 🙂

 

[QED]

That one is pretty easy.

The regular expression

'/Subject: Re: ?? ? news/'

should catch anything with that subject line.

 

[FP]

Originally posted by: MathMan
That one is pretty easy.

The regular expression

'/Subject: Re: ?? ? news/'

should catch anything with that subject line.

Not exactly. You need to specify the character(s) to use the ? on.

This is what you want:

/Re: [^ ]{2} [^ ] news/

It says, "match a string that contains the chars 'Re:' followed by a space, followed by two non-space characters, followed by a space, followed by a non-space character, followed by a space, and finally followed by the string 'news'.

 

[zimu]

Originally posted by: binister

Originally posted by: MathMan
That one is pretty easy.

The regular expression

'/Subject: Re: ?? ? news/'

should catch anything with that subject line.

Not exactly. You need to specify the character(s) to use the ? on.

This is what you want:

/Re: [^ ]{2} [^ ] news/

It says, "match a string that contains the chars 'Re:' followed by a space, followed by two non-space characters, followed by a space, followed by a non-space character, followed by a space, and finally followed by the string 'news'.

you rock 🙂
that worked!

Save message to: /dev/null 0660
Filtering set up at least one significant delivery or other action.
No other deliveries will occur.

 

[notfred]

I like mine better:
/Re: .. . news/

 

[FP]

Originally posted by: notfred
I like mine better:
/Re: .. . news/

that will match spaces