[Remind-Fans] Asterisk on subject line when remind -k'mail ...' directory

[Tim Chase]

On 2020-05-21 21:03, Jon Fineman wrote:
> remind -f -z5 -k'mail -s "reminder: %s" jjf </dev/null >/dev/null
> 2>&1' ~/reminders
> 
> produces the subject:
> reminder: \\\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\\test\ msg\ today\
> at\ 20\:50\\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\\
> 
> vs
> 
> remind -f -z5 -k'mail -s "reminder: %s" jjf </dev/null >/dev/null
> 2>&1' test_msg.rem
> 
> produces the subject:
> reminder: test\ msg\ today\ at\ 20\:50
> 
> test_msg.rem contains:
> REM Thur AT 20:50 MSG test msg %e %3
> 
> I have isolated the difference to using a directory vs a file name.
>
> Is there a way to suppress the asterisks?

Do you happen to have some special BANNER or other divider set in one
of your ~/.reminders/*.rem files?  I created a similar test-case:

  $ mkdir ~/.reminders
  $ echo 'REM MAY 2020 AT 20:29 MSG Thing 1' > .reminders/01.rem
  $ echo 'REM MAY 2020 AT 20:29 MSG Thing 2' > .reminders/02.rem
  $ remind -f -z5 -k'echo %s' ~/.reminders

(where "20:29" was one minute ahead of wall-time) and it doesn't
produce any stream of asterisks in the output.  If you issue

  $ fgrep '***' ~/.reminders/*.rem

does this produce a list of any suspect files?

Also, the "%s" does shell-escaping for you, so you should likely be
using something like

  $ remind -f -z5 -k'mail -s "reminders: "%s jjf'

which moves the %s outside of the quoted arguments to -s

-tim

PS: Glad you found the blog post helpful :-)