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Old 19 Jun 2020, 05:31 AM   #1
JeremyNicoll
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Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Scotland
Posts: 483
New rules - limited set of conditions

Using the old-fashioned "no-preview" rules dialogs.

Suppose you choose to define a rule on "Subject". Conditions are:
is exactly
contains
begins with
ends with
matches glob pattern
does not match glob pattern
matches regular expression
does not match regular expression

But suppose you want a condition on "To". You only get options for
is exactly
contains
begins with
ends with
matches glob pattern
matches regular expression

- which are all positive things (unless one writes a RE with a 'not' in it).

To my mind, even though "Subject" at least offers "not" variants of glob & regex, the list should also contain "is not", does not contain", "does not start", "does not end" and so on, as indeed should the "To" list. (And likewise for every other field.)

I've raised a ticket.
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Old 26 Jun 2020, 07:58 PM   #2
JeremyNicoll
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I finally got a response to this (apart from the first-level one forwarding it to someone else). It was:

Negated conditions can be very dangerous with discard rules, and usually, regular users do not want to do negated filtering on the To headers, and this I believe is why these are not made available with the basic rules.

However, for power users, there is the option of using the 'The sieve condition' look-in, or custom sieve scripting.

I've replied pointing out that:
a) I wasn't asking about discard rules
b) I couldn't care less about "regular users"
c) the question was not about "basic rules" but the more advanced "no-preview" ones
d) that hiding extra logic in a personal Sieve script is not ideal, because you tend to forget it is there

However I was previously unaware of the "The Sieve condition..." condition, which obviously does allow one to have a reminder on the list-of-rules screen. There is however no guidance given to exactly what one can or cannot place in the condition field (one line, multiple lines, do any characters need escaped?).


I'm still not happy that they don't support eg "does not contain" as one of the predefined conditions, nor that they have decided to support different sets of predefined conditions for different fields.

Does no-one else care about this?
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Old 26 Jun 2020, 08:19 PM   #3
JamesHenderson
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Location: Oxfordshire, UK
Posts: 603
Hi,

I haven't come across the need for a negative condition.

What does "the sieve condition" mean and how is it different from using Regex, say? I'll have a play.

If "the sieve condition" solves the problem, then it may be the safest way as typical users won't use it and the support guy/girl was right - negative conditions are tricky.

...I do find it odd that negative conditions appear for "subject" but not for "to" though. ...I would have thought it was an all-or-nothing thing.

Last edited by JamesHenderson : 26 Jun 2020 at 08:26 PM. Reason: typos
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Old 26 Jun 2020, 10:04 PM   #4
SideshowBob
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JamesHenderson View Post
Hi,
I haven't come across the need for a negative condition.
It's mostly useful with multiple tests like this and not that.


Quote:
What does "the sieve condition" mean and how is it different from using Regex, say?
Presumably it's just a sieve test expression, something that could go between an "if" and a "{" in a sieve script.
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Old 26 Jun 2020, 10:48 PM   #5
JamesHenderson
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cheers!


[extra words to make my reply long enough]

Last edited by JamesHenderson : 26 Jun 2020 at 10:48 PM. Reason: typo
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Old 27 Jun 2020, 06:20 AM   #6
xyzzy
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SideshowBob View Post
Presumably it's just a sieve test expression, something that could go between an "if" and a "{" in a sieve script.
I once was going to use "sieve condition" at one time and you are correct. It just a general escape to allow you to write an "if" test condition just like you would do when coding directly in sieve.

Last edited by xyzzy : 27 Jun 2020 at 06:25 AM.
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