Exim Filter Specification - The deliver command

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## The deliver command

         deliver <mail address>
    e.g. deliver "Dr Livingstone <David@somewhere.africa>"

This provides a forwarding operation. The message is sent on to the given address, exactly as happens if the address had appeared in a traditional ``.forward'` file. To deliver a copy of the message to your normal mailbox, your login name can be given. Once an address has been processed by the filtering mechanism, an identical generated address will not be so processed again, so doing this does not cause a loop.

However, if you have a mail alias, you should not refer to it here. For example, if the mail address ``L.Gulliver'` is aliased to ``lg103'` then all references in Gulliver's ``.forward'` file should be to ``lg103'`. A reference to the alias will not work for messages that are addressed to that alias, since, like ``.forward'` file processing, aliasing is performed only once on an address, in order to avoid looping.

Only a single address may be given to a deliver command, but multiple occurrences of the command may be used to cause the message to be delivered to more than one address. However, duplicate addresses are discarded.

Following the new address, an optional second address, preceded by ``errors_to'` may appear. This changes the address to which delivery errors on the forwarded message will be sent. Instead of going to the message's original sender, they go to this new address. For ordinary users, the only value that is permitted for this address is the user whose filter file is being processed. For example, the user ``lg103'` whose mailbox is in the domain lilliput.example could have a filter file that contains

         deliver jon@elsewhere.example errors_to lg103@lilliput.example

Clearly, using this feature makes sense only in situations where some (but not all) messages are being forwarded. In particular, bounce messages must not be forwarded in this way, as this is likely to create a mail loop if something goes wrong.

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