If the data for a PTR record is not a syntactically valid IP address, it is not
altered and nothing is added.
-.cindex "MX record" "in &(dnsdb)& lookup"
-.cindex "SRV record" "in &(dnsdb)& lookup"
-For an MX lookup, both the preference value and the host name are returned for
-each record, separated by a space. For an SRV lookup, the priority, weight,
-port, and host name are returned for each record, separated by spaces.
-
For any record type, if multiple records are found (or, for A6 lookups, if a
single record leads to multiple addresses), the data is returned as a
concatenation, with newline as the default separator. The order, of course,
It is permitted to specify a space as the separator character. Further
white space is ignored.
+.cindex "MX record" "in &(dnsdb)& lookup"
+.cindex "SRV record" "in &(dnsdb)& lookup"
+For an MX lookup, both the preference value and the host name are returned for
+each record, separated by a space. For an SRV lookup, the priority, weight,
+port, and host name are returned for each record, separated by spaces.
+.new
+An alternate field separator can be specified using a comma after the main
+separator character, followed immediately by the field separator.
+.wen
+
.cindex "TXT record" "in &(dnsdb)& lookup"
.cindex "SPF record" "in &(dnsdb)& lookup"
For TXT records with multiple items of data, only the first item is returned,
+.new
+.vitem &*${sort{*&<&'string'&>&*}{*&<&'comparator'&>&*}{*&<&'extractor'&>&*}}*&
+.cindex sorting a list
+.cindex list sorting
+After expansion, <&'string'&> is interpreted as a list, colon-separated by
+default, but the separator can be changed in the usual way.
+The <&'comparator'&> argument is interpreted as the operator
+of a two-argument expansion condition.
+The numeric operators plus ge, gt, le, lt (and ~i variants) are supported.
+The comparison should return true when applied to two values
+if the first value should sort before the second value.
+The <&'extractor'&> expansion is applied repeatedly to elements of the list,
+the element being placed in &$item$&,
+to give values for comparison.
+
+The item result is a sorted list,
+with the original list separator,
+of the list elements (in full) of the original.
+
+Examples:
+.code
+${sort{3:2:1:4}{<}{$item}}
+.endd
+sorts a list of numbers, and
+.code
+${sort {$lookup dnsdb{>:,,mx=example.com}} {<} {${listextract{1}{<,$item}}}}
+.endd
+will sort an MX lookup into priority order.
+.wen
+
+
.vitem &*${substr{*&<&'string1'&>&*}{*&<&'string2'&>&*}{*&<&'string3'&>&*}}*&
.cindex "&%substr%& expansion item"
.cindex "substring extraction"
be specified using &%condition%&.
.new
-When originally designed, Exim's ACL system enforced very strict parsing
-of the &%condition%& expansion everywhere it was being processed.
-Through the 4.7x release cycle, the &%condition%& processing while in a
-router became more loose, internally adopting the use of &%bool_lax%&
-instead of the more rigid &%bool%&. This is best illustrated in an
-example:
+Historical note: We have &%condition%& on ACLs and on Routers. Routers
+are far older, and use one set of semantics. ACLs are newer and when
+they were created, the ACL &%condition%& process was given far stricter
+parse semantics. The &%bool{}&% expansion condition uses the same rules as
+ACLs. The &%bool_lax{}%& expansion condition uses the same rules as
+Routers. More pointedly, the &%bool_lax{}%& was written to match the existing
+Router rules processing behavior.
+
+This is best illustrated in an example:
.code
-# This used to fail with a syntax error, now it
-# treats any extra characters as a string
+# If used in an ACL condition will fail with a syntax error, but
+# in a router condition any extra characters are treated as a string
$ exim -be '${if eq {${lc:GOOGLE.com}} {google.com}} {yes} {no}}'
true {yes} {no}}
&" {yes} {no}}"& appended to it.
In fact you can put excess forward braces in too. In the router
-&%condition%&, Exim's ACL parser only looks for &"{"& symbols when they
+&%condition%&, Exim's parser only looks for &"{"& symbols when they
mean something, like after a &"$"& or when required as part of a
conditional. But otherwise &"{"& and &"}"& are treated as ordinary
string characters.
+
+Thus, in a Router, the above expansion strings will both always evaluate
+true, as the result of expansion is a non-empty string which doesn't
+match an explicit false value. This can be tricky to debug. By
+contrast, in an ACL either of those strings will always result in an
+expansion error because the result doesn't look sufficiently boolean.
.wen