On Tue, 23 Nov 1999 16:54:04 CST, Pek Pongpaet <[log in to unmask]>  said:
> Hello everyone. I am a listserv novice and I have a problem. I would like to
> know if LISTSERV can parse incoming emails and depending on the content of
> the email, kick-off different processes such as exe's or cgi's. These emails
> will be coming from different users all coming from different domains.
>
> Basically, I would like to update a database with the incoming email.
>
> Thanks for your help in advance.

Don't get Listserv involved.  Have your mail delivery agent
do the work instead.  A popular scheme under Unix is to use procmail
or a .forward pipe to a program that does your updating. So for
instance, if you have a userid 'foobar' defined, then putting

% cat > ~foobar/.forward
| /my/database/updater/here
^D

will cause all mail to 'foobar' to launch the updater.  You will
of course have to do a little bit more work so 'foobar' can still
receive non-update mail, do security checking on the mail, etc etc etc.

Incidentally, 'cgi's are webserver-oriented, and don't really
apply in other contexts...

                                Valdis Kletnieks
                                Operating Systems Analyst
                                Virginia Tech