Autoreponder in exim_mainlog, even when off

Is it normal to see autoresponder references in the exim_mainlog even when the autoresponder in question is off?

What I mean is, there is an autoresponder setup for the particular email address, but in the settings for the autoresponder it is off, not active. So, what I think is happening is that exim must go through all the steps of forwarding it to the autoresponder but then it just dies after that unless the autoresponder is actually active?

I am only thinking about this because I'm trying to control outgoing mail, and autoresponders create really bad backscatter when spam is sent to them. So, I parsed the exim logs to see just how much was being created by doing this:

grep "=> .*@.*@.*" /var/log/exim_mainlog | awk '{print $6,$5}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | grep autorespond

I was surprised to see hundreds of what seemed like outgoing autoresponder emails. When I looked closer I found that most of autoresponders were not even active but yet entries were being created in the exim log.

I am just looking for some confirmation that my thinking is correct and wondering how I can get a real count of the outgoing email from active only autoresponders?

Thanks!

 

Okay, so my thinking (which took me a while to figure out) was correct.

Is there any way to determine the actual amount of autoresponses being generated?

 

Any command line magic that would make that not a massive undertaking?