Sieve (mail filtering language)

Sieve is a programming language for filtering email. It owes its creation to the Cyrus Project at Carnegie Mellon University, the creators of the Cyrus IMAP server, and it is not tied to any particular operating system or mail architecture, so the same filter script can be used by different mail servers. The Programming Language Database dates it to 2008 and records that early development took place at the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon. A Sieve script is a list of rules. The example on the database page begins by declaring the extensions it needs, then rejects messages over a size limit, files list mail into a folder by address, sends suspected spam to another folder, and otherwise keeps the message. The database also lists sed, awk and SMTP as related.