Maildrop

maildrop - mail delivery agent (MDA) with filtering abilities from Double Precision Inc, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Introduction

maildrop is the mail filter/mail delivery agent that's used by the Courier Mail Server. You do not need to download maildrop if you already have Courier installed. A standalone build of the maildrop mail filter that can be used with other mail servers is available.

maildrop is written in C++, and is significantly larger than procmail. However, it uses resources much more efficiently.

Unlike procmail, maildrop will not read a large mail message into memory. Large messages are saved in a temporary file, and are filtered from the temporary file. If the standard input to maildrop is a file, and not a pipe, a temporary file will not be necessary.

Functions

maildrop is a replacement for your local mail delivery agent. maildrop reads a mail message from standard input, then delivers the message to your mailbox. maildrop knows how to deliver mail to mailbox storage formats mbox and maildir.

maildrop optionally reads instructions from a file, which describe how to filter incoming mail. These instructions can direct maildrop to deliver the message to an alternate mailbox, or forward it somewhere else. Unlike procmail, maildrop uses a structured filtering language.

maildrop checks the mail delivery instruction syntax from the filter file, before attempting to deliver a message. Unlike procmail, if the filter file contains syntax errors, maildrop terminates without delivering the message. The user can fix the typo without causing any mail to be lost.

Translation

The word "Maildrop" occurs as such in the following languages: English, German.