Bryce Nesbitt:
> Here is try two at the end of line comment script for /etc/aliases.  Can
> anyone do this more elegantly?
> 
> #!/bin/sh
> # Created so we can have end of line comments in /etc/aliases
> sed 's/#.*$//;/^$/d' < /etc/aliases > /tmp/aliases_tmp ;
> /usr/sbin/sendmail -bi -oA/tmp/aliases_tmp ; mv /tmp/aliases_tmp.db
> /etc/aliases.db

The /etc/aliases file uses email address notation as defined in
Internet standards such as RFC 822.  When you have a chance to look
up this 27-year old document, then you will discover that it
describes a recursive language. 

For this reason, the contents of /etc/aliases cannot be parsed
correctly with regular expressions

In case you aren't aware of this, /#.*$/ is a regular expression.

        Wietse

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