Alias Format

The alias file consists of lines of the form:

local_part: item1, item2, ...

Items can be surrounded by quotes '"'. If within the quotes other quotes are needed for an address they can be escaped with a leading backslash '\'.

A leading '\' indicates that this address shall not be further expanded.

A leading pipe symbol '|' indicates that the item shall be treated as a pipe command. The content of the message will then be sent to the standard input of a command. The command will run under the user id and group id masqmail is running as. If quotes are needed, the pipe symbol must appear within the quotes.

Loops will be detected, the offending address will be ignored.

Aliases will be expanded at delivery time. This means that if there is a message still in the queue and you change any alias which matches one of the recipient addresses, the change will have effect next time a delivery is attemped.

There is no need to restart masqmail or run any command when the alias file has been changed.