If the TrustedUser option (TrustedUser) is set in the sendmail configuration file, and if editmap was compiled with HASFCHOWN defined as 1, and if editmap is run by root, the output file will become owned by the user specified in the TrustedUser option. The editmap program finds the TrustedUser option by reading and parsing the sendmail program's configuration file (normally /etc/mail/sendmail.cf). But if you want editmap to use a different configuration file, you can specify that different file with this -C switch. For example:

# editmap -x -C /etc/mail/sendmail.cf.new hash spamhosts host.spam-site.com

Here, we use editmap to delete the key host.spam-site.com from the database spamhosts. Because editmap was run by root (the # prompt), editmap looks up the TrustedUser option in the alternative configuration file specified by the -C (/etc/mail/sendmail.cf.new). If that option had, for example, a value of bin, editmap would set the owner of the database to bin.