Replacing ugly things would save the world many hours
There are some tools that we use daily, whether we realize it or not, that are unduly ugly. Over time you learn to use them and you forget just how hard they are to learn, and you take it for granted.
Today I had to guide somebody through using procmail, and I'd forgotten how annoying it is.
In brief I use procmail in three ways, each of which I had to document:
- Run a command, given a new email, and replace the original email with the output of that command.
- Run a command, silently. Just for fun.
- Match a regular expression on a header-field, and file accordingly.
- Later extended to matching regexps on multiple headers. ("AND" + "OR" )
There are some projects that are too entrenched to ever be replaced ("make", I'm looking at you), but procmail? I reckon there's a chance a replacement would be useful, quickly.
Then again, maybe I'm biased.