Pegasus mail sorter

This program lets you create mail sorting rules for use with the mail client pegasus mail. 

Features

  • This perl script will analyze folders in the pegasus mail directory and identify e-mail addresses that occur in certain fields of the message header. These fields are for example the "To:", "From:", "Sender:" or mailing list related fields. The existence of a certain e-mail address in a specific field is a "feature" of this message.

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  • The script will then calculate statistics over the presence or absence of certain features in messages.

    If

    • the number of messages with a certain feature outside a folder is not larger than a maximum (for instance 5%) when compared to all messages with this feature
       
      • and
       
    • the number of messages per folder with this feature is larger than a certain minimum (for instance 20%) when compared to all messages in this folder

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    then a rule will be defined that will sort all incoming messages with this feature into this folder.
     
  • The count limits can be freely defined.

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  • Creating sorting rules proceeds in rounds. After every round all messages which triggered a rule are removed from the set of messages and the statistics are recalculated. If a rule was deemed unsafe, it may not be unsafe anymore in a new round, because the sort folder has become unambigous after the removal of messages.

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  • The script will produce a log file which contains recommendations about from which folder into which other folder certain messages should be moved together with the message id's of these messages. The logfile can be used to move incorrectly sorted messages into the correct folder.

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  • The script will produce a rule file (with extension .pmc), which is placed by default in the current folder. If the file is placed in the pegasus mail directory and has the extension ".pmc" it is recognized as a rule file and can be used to filter messages.

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  • The run speed is dependent on the availability of memory and CPU speed. 55000 messages on two computers I use take roughly 6 minutes (320 MB RAM, 800 MHz) and 50 minutes (96 MB RAM, 233 MHz).

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  • The program only READS message folders and does never write to them. It does not alter any of the Pegasus mail files. The only modified file that is directly used by Pegasus mail is the rule file.
     

License

This program is licensed under the terms of the GNU public license. 
 

Prequisites

A working perl installation. Activestate provides Perl for free for windows.

The program should be runnable on any operative system on which perl and pegasus is installed. 
 

Installation

  • Place the parameter file and the perl script into a directory of your choice

  • Edit the parameter file
     

Usage

  • Simply run the script by double-click or as scheduled process
     

Warning

  • Please make sure that you test the program and look at the logfile and the rule file before you apply the rule file to your messages.
     

Download pmsorter

pmsorter V0.6 (8 March 2003)
 

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