How Invalid Commands Are Handled

When ListManager sees an invalid command, it takes note, and moves to the next line. If more than ten lines in an email message are invalid, the message processing stops.

For example, consider an administrator who sends a series of commands to ListManager, but the administrator misspells one of the commands. In such a case, the correctly spelled commands will be executed, and an email message will be sent to the person indicating which commands were successfully processed and which lines in the email message did not appear to be ListManager commands.

Signature Detection

Since so many people on the Internet use signatures, ListManager has a built-in signature detection mechanism. The purpose of this mechanism is to stop processing the message, which prevents signature lines from generating errors in the response email ListManager sends out. Detecting a signature is analogous to issuing the "end" command.

This mechanism looks for either of these character strings: "--", "**", or "==". Once one of these strings is encountered, ListManager stops processing the message immediately. Please note that this mechanism is not fully activated in a MIME-encoded message, because in that case the "--" may be a content type separator, and in that case the message still needs to be processed. The exception is if the MIME type is "text/plain", in which case the parser still check for "---", since it isn't oddly encoded.