On Tue, 8 Dec 1998, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

: > Since NO_SENDMAIL is there,
: 
: No, that is not the answer. NO_SENDMAIL is a temporary hack.

That's my point; I left out a portion of a sentence.  "Since it's there as a
temporary fix, it is possible to go about this the right way, and..."

: > I'll draw up a proposal for a config based
: > system and actually write the code so everyone is happy.  <sigh>
: > (C, not script, for lower overhead of both reading the conf file and
: > exec()ing the real mailer.)
: 
: If the script is long enough to require C, something is probably wrong...

The overhead of execing /bin/sh, doing shell interpretation to read
sendmail.conf [or whatever], and determining what to run, reformatting the
args to get quoting right, is a lot higher than (pseudo):

main(argc,argv) {
   FILE *f = fopen(sendmail.conf, r)
   fread(sendmail.conf, prog) until proper line found
   execv(prog, argv)
}

In the case of `sendmail' proper, where things like mailing lists are
involved, this is a much faster solution.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)