Delete

The delete command lets a list administrator unsubscribe a member from their list. The syntax of the delete command is:

delete listname emailaddress [quiet]

The quiet modifier is optional. The word "del" may be used instead of the word "delete". For example:

delete jazztalk bob@example.com

If you specify the quiet modifier, no confirming email messages will be sent out. However, if the delete command does not succeed, such as if the email address is not a member, you (the person submitting the delete command) will be notified. By default, when you delete a member with the delete command, both you and the user receives notification that they have been removed. If a "goodbye" document exists for the list, that document is sent to the user instead of a machine-generated notification. With the quiet modifier, no notification is sent to the user or to the administrator.

As an alternative to providing an email address, you can use the member id of the member you wish to delete. For example, if you know member with id 1234 needs to be removed from the list, but you don't know that member's email address, you can use the member id without a problem. An example:

delete jazztalk 1234

You can specify any number of members to delete on the command line. For example, to delete the users "bob@example.com" and "jane@elsewhere.com", you would write:

delete jazztalk bob@example.com jane@elsewhere.com

The delete command is only available to administrators. You must issue a "login" command before using the delete command. For more information about login, see "Login".

Note that the delete command does not actually delete the member from the database; the member is still part of the list, but is unsubscribed. They will not receive normal postings from the list.

Delete from all Lists

You can use a "*" in place of the list name in the "delete" command, and a person will be unsubscribed from all lists they belong too. For example, to remove "bob@example.com" from all lists on your server, you would use the command:

delete * bob@example.com

You may use this syntax to delete multiple members from all lists on your server:

delete * bob@example.com jane@example.com

Delete all members in a List

To unsubscribe all members (except admins) from a list, substitute "all" for the email address:

delete jazztalk all