Re: Problem incorporating old mail file

[reader]

Aaron Hsu <spam@sacrificumdeo.net> writes:

>> Procmail can split in literally any way you can dream up.  It is very
>> versatile.
>
> I might be interested in taking this route if it is going to be the
> fastest and the cleanest. Mainly, here was what I was thinking. Most of
> my important mail can be determined by who sent it (some people use
> multiple email addresses). With procmail, would it be possible to grab
> all the mail, first remove all the empty newsgroup entries, and then put
> all the mail into individual mboxes or what have you corresponding to
> the email addresses (actually the full contents of the from header would
> be best) of the sender?

Yes.
I'm not sure it is the quickest or cleanest.  And it will take some
experimentation to get the results you want.  It may take a fair bit
of experimentation so be warned it could take some time and effort to
get the results you want.  

However the big file itself will not be altered in any way so you can
always rerun the process until you get the desired result.

Procmail can rewrite/remote headers in just about any way you
like. (by using other tools like sed or whatever) but that is
transparent to the processing.  

Although I'm not sure it can handle 500mb but I think it probably can
since it is used in some really hefty mail handling situations.

Please post at least 2 full messages so we can see the format.

Try `head -200 largefile >first200' to get the first 200 lines.
That won't alter the big file in any way.

... might be more than 2 messages but just post enough so we can see
the format of at least 2 messages.  How they start and end.  What
separates them.