MAIL REFERENCE MANUAL
Kurt Shoens
Revised by
Craig Leres and Mark Andrews
Version 5.5
January 15, 2012
1. Introduction
Mail provides a simple and friendly environment for sending and
receiving mail. It divides incoming mail into its constituent messages
and allows the user to deal with them in any order. In addition, it
provides a set of ed-like commands for manipulating messages and send-
ing mail. Mail offers the user simple editing capabilities to ease the
composition of outgoing messages, as well as providing the ability to
define and send to names which address groups of users. Finally, Mail
is able to send and receive messages across such networks as the
ARPANET, UUCP, and Berkeley network.
This document describes how to use the Mail program to send and
receive messages. The reader is not assumed to be familiar with other
message handling systems, but should be familiar with the UNIX[1]
shell, the text editor, and some of the common UNIX commands. "The
UNIX Programmer's Manual," "An Introduction to Csh," and "Text Editing
with Ex and Vi" can be consulted for more information on these topics.
A word of explanation is in order here concerning the name Mail:
the original UNIX mail program was known as /bin/mail. The BSD mail
program was called Mail to differentiate it from the older mail
____________________
[1] UNIX is a trademark of Bell Laboratories.
USD:7-2 Mail Reference Manual
program. /bin/mail is not included in OpenBSD so there is no ambiguity
and the BSD mail program is installed as /usr/bin/mail; /usr/bin/Mail
is simply a link for backwards compatibility. To further confuse the
issue, a second link was retained for compatibility with SystemV sys-
tems, mailx. In this document, we use the original name, `Mail', to
refer to any of these.
Here is how messages are handled: the mail system accepts incom-
ing messages for you from other people and collects them in a file,
called your system mailbox. When you log in, the system notifies you
if there are any messages waiting in your system mailbox. If you are
a csh user, you will be notified when new mail arrives if you inform
the shell of the location of your mailbox. On OpenBSD, your system
mailbox is located in the directory /var/mail in a file with your
login name. If your login name is "sam," then you can make csh notify
you of new mail by including the following line in your .cshrc file:
set mail=/var/mail/sam
When you read your mail using Mail, it reads your system mailbox and
separates that file into the individual messages that have been sent
to you. You can then read, reply to, delete, or save these messages.
Each message is marked with its author and the date they sent it.
2. Common usage
The Mail command has two distinct usages, according to whether
one wants to send or receive mail. Sending mail is simple: to send a
message to a user whose login name is, say, "root," use the shell com-
mand:
% Mail root
then type your message. When you reach the end of the message, type
an EOT (Control-D) at the beginning of a line, which will cause Mail
to echo "EOT" and return you to the Shell. When the user you sent
mail to next logs in, he will receive the message:
You have mail.
to alert him to the existence of your message.
If, while you are composing the message you decide that you do
not wish to send it after all, you can abort the letter with a
<Control-C>. Typing a single <Control-C> causes Mail to print
(Interrupt -- one more to kill letter)
Typing a second <Control-C> causes Mail to save your partial letter on
the file "dead.letter" in your home directory and abort the letter.
Once you have sent mail to someone, there is no way to undo the act,
so be careful.
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The message your recipient reads will consist of the message you
typed, preceded by a line telling who sent the message (your login
name) and the date and time it was sent.
If you want to send the same message to several other people, you
can list their login names on the command line. Thus,
% Mail sam bob john
Tuition fees are due next Friday. Don't forget!!
<Control-D>
EOT
%
will send the reminder to sam, bob, and john.
If, when you log in, you see the message,
You have mail.
you can read the mail by typing simply:
% Mail
Mail will respond by typing its version number and date and then list-
ing the messages you have waiting. Then it will type a prompt and
await your command. The messages are assigned numbers starting with 1
-- you refer to the messages with these numbers. Mail keeps track of
which messages are new (have been sent since you last read your mail)
and read (have been read by you). New messages have an N next to them
in the header listing and old, but unread messages have a U next to
them. Mail keeps track of new/old and read/unread messages by putting
a header field called "Status" into your messages.
To look at a specific message, use the type command, which may be
abbreviated to simply t. For example, if you had the following mes-
sages:
N 1 root Wed Sep 21 09:21 "Tuition fees"
N 2 sam Tue Sep 20 22:55
you could examine the first message by giving the command:
type 1
which might cause Mail to respond with, for example:
Message 1:
From root Wed Sep 21 09:21:45 1978
Subject: Tuition fees
Status: R
Tuition fees are due next Wednesday. Don't forget!!
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Many Mail commands that operate on messages take a message number as
an argument like the type command. For these commands, there is a
notion of a current message. When you enter the Mail program, the
current message is initially the first one. Thus, you can often omit
the message number and use, for example,
t
to type the current message. As a further shorthand, you can type a
message by simply giving its message number. Hence,
1
would type the first message.
Frequently, it is useful to read the messages in your mailbox in
order, one after another. You can read the next message in Mail by
simply typing a newline. As a special case, you can type a newline as
your first command to Mail to type the first message.
If, after reading a message, you wish to immediately send a
reply, you can do so with the reply command. Reply, like type, takes a
message number as an argument. Mail then begins a message addressed to
the user who sent you the message. You may then type in your letter in
reply, followed by a <Control-D> at the beginning of a line, as
before. Mail will type EOT, then type the ampersand prompt to indicate
its readiness to accept another command. In our example, if, after
typing the first message, you wished to reply to it, you might give
the command:
reply
Mail responds by typing:
To: root
Subject: Re: Tuition fees
and waiting for you to enter your letter. You are now in the message
collection mode described at the beginning of this section and Mail
will gather up your message up to a <Control-D>. Note that it copies
the subject header from the original message. This is useful in that
correspondence about a particular matter will tend to retain the same
subject heading, making it easy to recognize. If there are other
header fields in the message, the information found will also be used.
For example, if the letter had a "To:" header listing several reci-
pients, Mail would arrange to send your reply to the same people as
well. Similarly, if the original message contained a "Cc:" (carbon
copies to) field, Mail would send your reply to those users, too. Mail
is careful, though, not too send the message to you, even if you
appear in the "To:" or "Cc:" field, unless you ask to be included
explicitly. See section 4 for more details.
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After typing in your letter, the dialog with Mail might look like
the following:
reply
To: root
Subject: Tuition fees
Thanks for the reminder
EOT
&
The reply command is especially useful for sustaining extended
conversations over the message system, with other "listening" users
receiving copies of the conversation. The reply command can be abbre-
viated to r.
Sometimes you will receive a message that has been sent to
several people and wish to reply only to the person who sent it. Reply
with a capital R replies to a message, but sends a copy to the sender
only.
If you wish, while reading your mail, to send a message to some-
one, but not as a reply to one of your messages, you can send the mes-
sage directly with the mail command, which takes as arguments the
names of the recipients you wish to send to. For example, to send a
message to "frank," you would do:
mail frank
This is to confirm our meeting next Friday at 4.
EOT
&
The mail command can be abbreviated to m.
Normally, each message you receive is saved in the file mbox in
your login directory at the time you leave Mail. Often, however, you
will not want to save a particular message you have received because
it is only of passing interest. To avoid saving a message in mbox you
can delete it using the delete command. In our example,
delete 1
will prevent Mail from saving message 1 (from root) in mbox. In addi-
tion to not saving deleted messages, Mail will not let you type them,
either. The effect is to make the message disappear altogether, along
with its number. The delete command can be abbreviated to simply d.
Many features of Mail can be tailored to your liking with the set
command. The set command has two forms, depending on whether you are
setting a binary option or a valued option. Binary options are either
on or off. For example, the "ask" option informs Mail that each time
you send a message, you want it to prompt you for a subject header, to
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be included in the message. To set the "ask" option, you would type
set ask
Another useful Mail option is "hold." Unless told otherwise, Mail
moves the messages from your system mailbox to the file mbox in your
home directory when you leave Mail. If you want Mail to keep your
letters in the system mailbox instead, you can set the "hold" option.
Valued options are values which Mail uses to adapt to your
tastes. For example, the "SHELL" option tells Mail which shell you
like to use, and is specified by
set SHELL=/bin/csh
for example. Note that no spaces are allowed in "SHELL=/bin/csh." A
complete list of the Mail options appears in section 5.
Another important valued option is "crt." If you use a fast video
terminal, you will find that when you print long messages, they fly by
too quickly for you to read them. With the "crt" option, you can make
Mail print any message larger than a given number of lines by sending
it through a paging program. This program is specified by the valued
option PAGER. If PAGER is not set, a default paginator is used. For
example, most CRT users with 24-line screens should do:
set crt=24
to paginate messages that will not fit on their screens. In the
default state, more (default paginator) prints a screenful of informa-
tion, then types ``byte XXX'', where `XXX' represents the number of
bytes paginated. Type a space to see the next screenful.
Another adaptation to user needs that Mail provides is that of
aliases. An alias is simply a name which stands for one or more real
user names. Mail sent to an alias is really sent to the list of real
users associated with it. For example, an alias can be defined for
the members of a project, so that you can send mail to the whole pro-
ject by sending mail to just a single name. The alias command in Mail
defines an alias. Suppose that the users in a project are named Sam,
Sally, Steve, and Susan. To define an alias called "project" for
them, you would use the Mail command:
alias project sam sally steve susan
The alias command can also be used to provide a convenient name for
someone whose user name is inconvenient. For example, if a user named
"Bob Anderson" had the login name "anderson,"" you might want to use:
alias bob anderson
so that you could send mail to the shorter name, "bob."
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While the alias and set commands allow you to customize Mail,
they have the drawback that they must be retyped each time you enter
Mail. To make them more convenient to use, Mail always looks for two
files when it is invoked. It first reads a system wide file
"/etc/mail.rc," then a user specific file, ".mailrc," which is found
in the user's home directory. The system wide file is maintained by
the system administrator and contains set commands that are applicable
to all users of the system. The ".mailrc" file is usually used by each
user to set options the way he likes and define individual aliases.
For example, my .mailrc file looks like this:
set ask nosave SHELL=/bin/csh
As you can see, it is possible to set many options in the same set
command. The "nosave" option is described in section 5.
Mail aliasing is implemented at the system-wide level by the mail
delivery system sendmail. These aliases are stored in the file
/etc/mail/aliases and are accessible to all users of the system. The
lines in /etc/mail/aliases are of the form:
alias: name<1>, name<2>, name<3>
where alias is the mailing list name and the name<i> are the members
of the list. Long lists can be continued onto the next line by start-
ing the next line with a space or tab. Remember that you must execute
the command newaliases (as superuser) after editing /etc/mail/aliases
since the delivery system uses an indexed file created by newaliases.
We have seen that Mail can be invoked with command line arguments
which are people to send the message to, or with no arguments to read
mail. Specifying the -f flag on the command line causes Mail to read
messages from a file other than your system mailbox. For example, if
you have a collection of messages in the file "letters" you can use
Mail to read them with:
% Mail -f letters
You can use all the Mail commands described in this document to exam-
ine, modify, or delete messages from your "letters" file, which will
be rewritten when you leave Mail with the quit command described
below.
Since mail that you read is saved in the file mbox in your home
directory by default, you can read mbox in your home directory by
using simply
% Mail -f
Normally, messages that you examine using the type command are
saved in the file "mbox" in your home directory if you leave Mail with
the quit command described below. If you wish to retain a message in
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your system mailbox you can use the preserve command to tell Mail to
leave it there. The preserve command accepts a list of message
numbers, just like type and may be abbreviated to pre.
Messages in your system mailbox that you do not examine are nor-
mally retained in your system mailbox automatically. If you wish to
have such a message saved in mbox without reading it, you may use the
mbox command to have them so saved. For example,
mbox 2
in our example would cause the second message (from sam) to be saved
in mbox when the quit command is executed. Mbox is also the way to
direct messages to your mbox file if you have set the "hold" option
described above. Mbox can be abbreviated to mb.
When you have perused all the messages of interest, you can leave
Mail with the quit command, which saves the messages you have typed
but not deleted in the file mbox in your login directory. Deleted
messages are discarded irretrievably, and messages left untouched are
preserved in your system mailbox so that you will see them the next
time you type:
% Mail
The quit command can be abbreviated to simply q.
If you wish for some reason to leave Mail quickly without alter-
ing either your system mailbox or mbox, you can type the x command
(short for exit), which will immediately return you to the Shell
without changing anything.
If, instead, you want to execute a Shell command without leaving
Mail, you can type the command preceded by an exclamation point, just
as in the text editor. Thus, for instance:
!date
will print the current date without leaving Mail.
Finally, the help command is available to print out a brief sum-
mary of the Mail commands, using only the single character command
abbreviations.
3. Maintaining folders
Mail includes a simple facility for maintaining groups of mes-
sages together in folders. This section describes this facility.
To use the folder facility, you must tell Mail where you wish to
keep your folders. Each folder of messages will be a single file.
For convenience, all of your folders are kept in a single directory of
your choosing. To tell Mail where your folder directory is, put a
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line of the form
set folder=letters
in your .mailrc file. If, as in the example above, your folder direc-
tory does not begin with a `/,' Mail will assume that your folder
directory is to be found starting from your home directory. Thus, if
your home directory is /home/person the above example told Mail to
find your folder directory in /home/person/letters.
Anywhere a file name is expected, you can use a folder name, pre-
ceded with `+.' For example, to put a message into a folder with the
save command, you can use:
save +classwork
to save the current message in the classwork folder. If the classwork
folder does not yet exist, it will be created. Note that messages
which are saved with the save command are automatically removed from
your system mailbox.
In order to make a copy of a message in a folder without causing
that message to be removed from your system mailbox, use the copy com-
mand, which is identical in all other respects to the save command.
For example,
copy +classwork
copies the current message into the classwork folder and leaves a copy
in your system mailbox.
The folder command can be used to direct Mail to the contents of
a different folder. For example,
folder +classwork
directs Mail to read the contents of the classwork folder. All of the
commands that you can use on your system mailbox are also applicable
to folders, including type, delete, and reply. To inquire which folder
you are currently editing, use simply:
folder
To list your current set of folders, use the folders command.
To start Mail reading one of your folders, you can use the -f
option described in section 2. For example:
% Mail -f +classwork
will cause Mail to read your classwork folder without looking at your
system mailbox.
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4. More about sending mail
4.1. Tilde escapes
While typing in a message to be sent to others, it is often use-
ful to be able to invoke the text editor on the partial message, print
the message, execute a shell command, or do some other auxiliary func-
tion. Mail provides these capabilities through tilde escapes, which
consist of a tilde (~) at the beginning of a line, followed by a sin-
gle character which indicates the function to be performed. For exam-
ple, to print the text of the message so far, use:
~p
which will print a line of dashes, the recipients of your message, and
the text of the message so far. Since Mail requires two consecutive
<Control-C>'s to abort a letter, you can use a single <Control-C> to
abort the output of ~p or any other ~ escape without killing your
letter.
If you are dissatisfied with the message as it stands, you can
invoke the text editor on it using the escape
~e
which causes the message to be copied into a temporary file and an
instance of the editor to be spawned. After modifying the message to
your satisfaction, write it out and quit the editor. Mail will respond
by typing
(continue)
after which you may continue typing text which will be appended to
your message, or type <Control-D> to end the message. A standard text
editor is provided by Mail. You can override this default by setting
the valued option "EDITOR" to something else. For example, you might
prefer:
set EDITOR=/bin/ed
Many systems offer a screen editor as an alternative to the stan-
dard text editor, such as the vi editor from UC Berkeley, or mg, an
emacs-like editor. To use the screen, or visual editor, on your
current message, you can use the escape,
~v
~v works like ~e, except that the screen editor is invoked instead. A
default screen editor is defined by Mail. If it does not suit you, you
can set the valued option "VISUAL" to the path name of a different
editor.
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It is often useful to be able to include the contents of some
file in your message; the escape
~r filename
is provided for this purpose, and causes the named file to be appended
to your current message. Mail complains if the file doesn't exist or
can't be read. If the read is successful, the number of lines and
characters appended to your message is printed, after which you may
continue appending text. The filename may contain shell metacharac-
ters like * and ? which are expanded according to the conventions of
your shell.
As a special case of ~r, the escape
~d
reads in the file "dead.letter" in your home directory. This is often
useful since Mail copies the text of your message there when you abort
a message with <Control-C>.
To save the current text of your message on a file you may use
the
~w filename
escape. Mail will print out the number of lines and characters written
to the file, after which you may continue appending text to your mes-
sage. Shell metacharacters may be used in the filename, as in ~r and
are expanded with the conventions of your shell.
If you are sending mail from within Mail's command mode you can
read a message sent to you into the message you are constructing with
the escape:
~m 4
which will read message 4 into the current message, shifted right by
one tab stop. You can name any non-deleted message, or list of mes-
sages. Messages can also be forwarded without shifting by a tab stop
with ~f. This is the usual way to forward a message.
If, in the process of composing a message, you decide to add
additional people to the list of message recipients, you can do so
with the escape
~t name1 name2 ...
You may name as few or many additional recipients as you wish. Note
that the users originally on the recipient list will still receive the
message; you cannot remove someone from the recipient list with ~t.
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If you wish, you can associate a subject with your message by
using the escape
~s Arbitrary string of text
which replaces any previous subject with "Arbitrary string of text."
The subject, if given, is sent near the top of the message prefixed
with "Subject:" You can see what the message will look like by using
~p.
For political reasons, one occasionally prefers to list certain
people as recipients of carbon copies of a message rather than direct
recipients. The escape
~c name1 name2 ...
adds the named people to the "Cc:" list, similar to ~t. Again, you can
execute ~p to see what the message will look like.
The escape
~b name1 name2 ...
adds the named people to the "Cc:" list, but does not make the names
visible in the "Cc:" line ("blind" carbon copy).
The recipients of the message together constitute the "To:"
field, the subject the "Subject:" field, and the carbon copies the
"Cc:" field. If you wish to edit these in ways impossible with the
~t, ~s, ~c and ~b escapes, you can use the escape
~h
which prints "To:" followed by the current list of recipients and
leaves the cursor (or printhead) at the end of the line. If you type
in ordinary characters, they are appended to the end of the current
list of recipients. You can also use your erase character to erase
back into the list of recipients, or your kill character to erase them
altogether. Thus, for example, if your erase and kill characters are
the standard (on printing terminals) <Control-H> and <Control-U> keys,
~h
To: root kurt^H^H^H^Hbill
would change the initial recipients "root kurt" to "root bill." When
you type a newline, Mail advances to the "Subject:" field, where the
same rules apply. Another newline brings you to the "Cc:" field,
which may be edited in the same fashion. Another newline brings you
to the "Bcc:" ("blind" carbon copy) field, which follows the same
rules as the "Cc:" field. Another newline leaves you appending text
to the end of your message. You can use ~p to print the current text
of the header fields and the body of the message.
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To effect a temporary escape to the shell, the escape
~!command
is used, which executes command and returns you to mailing mode
without altering the text of your message. If you wish, instead, to
filter the body of your message through a shell command, then you can
use
~|command
which pipes your message through the command and uses the output as
the new text of your message. If the command produces no output, Mail
assumes that something is amiss and retains the old version of your
message. A frequently-used filter is the command fmt, designed to
format outgoing mail.
To effect a temporary escape to Mail command mode instead, you
can use the
~:Mail command
escape. This is especially useful for retyping the message you are
replying to, using, for example:
~:t
It is also useful for setting options and modifying aliases.
If you wish abort the current message, you can use the escape
~q
This will terminate the current message and return you to the shell
(or Mail if you were using the mail command). If the save option is
set, the message will be copied to the file "dead.letter" in your home
directory.
If you wish (for some reason) to send a message that contains a
line beginning with a tilde, you must double it. Thus, for example,
~~This line begins with a tilde.
sends the line
~This line begins with a tilde.
Finally, the escape
~?
prints out a brief summary of the available tilde escapes.
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On some terminals (particularly ones with no lower case) tilde's
are difficult to type. Mail allows you to change the escape character
with the "escape" option. For example, I set
set escape=]
and use a right bracket instead of a tilde. If I ever need to send a
line beginning with right bracket, I double it, just as for ~. Chang-
ing the escape character removes the special meaning of ~.
4.2. Network access
This section describes how to send mail to people on other
machines. Recall that sending to a plain login name sends mail to that
person on your machine. If your machine is directly (or sometimes,
even, indirectly) connected to the Internet, you can send messages to
people on the Internet using a name of the form
name@host.domain
where name is the login name of the person you're trying to reach,
host is the name of the machine on the Internet, and domain is the
higher-level scope within which the hostname is known, e.g. EDU (for
educational institutions), COM (for commercial entities), GOV (for
governmental agencies), ARPA for many other things, BITNET or CSNET
for those networks.
If your recipient logs in on a machine connected to yours by UUCP
(the Bell Laboratories supplied network that communicates over tele-
phone lines), sending mail can be a bit more complicated. You must
know the list of machines through which your message must travel to
arrive at his site. So, if his machine is directly connected to
yours, you can send mail to him using the syntax:
host!name
where, again, host is the name of the machine and name is the login
name. If your message must go through an intermediary machine first,
you must use the syntax:
intermediary!host!name
and so on. It is actually a feature of UUCP that the map of all the
systems in the network is not known anywhere (except where people
decide to write it down for convenience). Talk to your system
administrator about good ways to get places; the uuname command will
tell you systems whose names are recognized, but not which ones are
frequently called or well-connected.
When you use the reply command to respond to a letter, there is a
problem of figuring out the names of the users in the "To:" and "Cc:"
lists relative to the current machine. If the original letter was sent
to you by someone on the local machine, then this problem does not
Mail Reference Manual USD:7-15
exist, but if the message came from a remote machine, the problem must
be dealt with. Mail uses a heuristic to build the correct name for
each user relative to the local machine. So, when you reply to remote
mail, the names in the "To:" and "Cc:" lists may change somewhat.
4.3. Special recipients
As described previously, you can send mail to either user names
or alias names. It is also possible to send messages directly to
files or to programs, using special conventions. If a recipient name
has a `/' in it or begins with a `+', it is assumed to be the path
name of a file into which to send the message. If the file already
exists, the message is appended to the end of the file. If you want
to name a file in your current directory (ie, one for which a `/'
would not usually be needed) you can precede the name with `./' So, to
send mail to the file "memo" in the current directory, you can give
the command:
% Mail ./memo
If the name begins with a `+,' it is expanded into the full path name
of the folder name in your folder directory. This ability to send mail
to files can be used for a variety of purposes, such as maintaining a
journal and keeping a record of mail sent to a certain group of users.
The second example can be done automatically by including the full
pathname of the record file in the alias command for the group. Using
our previous alias example, you might give the command:
alias project sam sally steve susan /usr/project/mail_record
Then, all mail sent to "project" would be saved on the file
"/usr/project/mail_record" as well as being sent to the members of the
project. This file can be examined using Mail -f.
It is sometimes useful to send mail directly to a program, for
example one might write a project billboard program and want to access
it using Mail. To send messages to the billboard program, one can send
mail to the special name `|billboard' for example. Mail treats reci-
pient names that begin with a `|' as a program to send the mail to.
An alias can be set up to reference a `|' prefaced name if desired.
Caveats: the shell treats `|' specially, so it must be quoted on the
command line. Also, the `| program' must be presented as a single
argument to mail. The safest course is to surround the entire name
with double quotes. This also applies to usage in the alias command.
For example, if we wanted to alias `rmsgs' to `rmsgs -s' we would need
to say:
alias rmsgs "| rmsgs -s"
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5. Additional features
This section describes some additional commands useful for read-
ing your mail, setting options, and handling lists of messages.
5.1. Message lists
Several Mail commands accept a list of messages as an argument.
Along with type and delete, described in section 2, there is the from
command, which prints the message headers associated with the message
list passed to it. The from command is particularly useful in conjunc-
tion with some of the message list features described below.
A message list consists of a list of message numbers, ranges, and
names, separated by spaces or tabs. Message numbers may be either
decimal numbers, which directly specify messages, or one of the spe-
cial characters "^", ".", or "$" to specify the first relevant,
current, or last relevant message, respectively. Relevant here means,
for most commands "not deleted" and "deleted" for the undelete com-
mand.
A range of messages consists of two message numbers (of the form
described in the previous paragraph) separated by a dash. Thus, to
print the first four messages, use
type 1-4
and to print all the messages from the current message to the last
message, use
type .-$
A name is a user name. The user names given in the message list
are collected together and each message selected by other means is
checked to make sure it was sent by one of the named users. If the
message consists entirely of user names, then every message sent by
one of those users that is relevant (in the sense described earlier)
is selected. Thus, to print every message sent to you by "root," do
type root
As a shorthand notation, you can specify simply "*" to get every
relevant (same sense) message. Thus,
type *
prints all undeleted messages,
delete *
deletes all undeleted messages, and
Mail Reference Manual USD:7-17
undelete *
undeletes all deleted messages.
You can search for the presence of a word in subject lines with
/. For example, to print the headers of all messages that contain the
word "PASCAL," do:
from /pascal
Note that subject searching ignores upper/lower case differences.
5.2. List of commands
This section describes all the Mail commands available when
receiving mail.
- The - command goes to the previous message and prints it. The -
command may be given a decimal number n as an argument, in which
case the nth previous message is gone to and printed.
? Prints a brief summary of commands.
! Used to preface a command to be executed by the shell.
Print
Like print, but also print out ignored header fields. See also
print, ignore, and retain. Print can be abbreviated to P.
Reply or Respond
Note the capital R in the name. Frame a reply to one or more mes-
sages. The reply (or replies if you are using this on multiple
messages) will be sent ONLY to the person who sent you the mes-
sage (respectively, the set of people who sent the messages you
are replying to). You can add people using the ~t, ~c, and ~b
tilde escapes. The subject in your reply is formed by prefacing
the subject in the original message with "Re:" unless it already
began thus. If the original message included a "reply-to" header
field, the reply will go only to the recipient named by "reply-
to." You type in your message using the same conventions avail-
able to you through the mail command. The Reply command is espe-
cially useful for replying to messages that were sent to enormous
distribution groups when you really just want to send a message
to the originator. Use it often. Reply (and Respond) can be
abbreviated to R.
Type
Identical to the Print command. Type can be abbreviated to T.
alias
Define a name to stand for a set of other names. This is used
when you want to send messages to a certain group of people and
want to avoid retyping their names. For example
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alias project john sue willie kathryn
creates an alias project which expands to the four people John,
Sue, Willie, and Kathryn. If no arguments are given, all
currently-defined aliases are printed. If one argument is given,
that alias is printed (if it exists). Alias can be abbreviated to
a.
alternates
If you have accounts on several machines, you may find it con-
venient to use /etc/mail/aliases on all the machines except one
to direct your mail to a single account. The alternates command
is used to inform Mail that each of these other addresses is
really you. Alternates takes a list of user names and remembers
that they are all actually you. When you reply to messages that
were sent to one of these alternate names, Mail will not bother
to send a copy of the message to this other address (which would
simply be directed back to you by the alias mechanism). If alter-
nates is given no argument, it lists the current set of alternate
names. Alternates is usually used in the .mailrc file. Alternates
can be abbreviated to alt.
chdir
The chdir command allows you to change your current directory.
Chdir takes a single argument, which is taken to be the pathname
of the directory to change to. If no argument is given, chdir
changes to your home directory. Chdir can be abbreviated to c.
copy
The copy command does the same thing that save does, except that
it does not mark the messages it is used on for deletion when you
quit. Copy can be abbreviated to co.
delete
Deletes a list of messages. Deleted messages can be reclaimed
with the undelete command. Delete can be abbreviated to d.
dp or dt
These commands delete the current message and print the next mes-
sage. They are useful for quickly reading and disposing of mail.
If there is no next message, Mail says ``No more messages.''
edit
To edit individual messages using the text editor, the edit com-
mand is provided. The edit command takes a list of messages as
described under the type command and processes each by writing it
into the file Messagex where x is the message number being edited
and executing the text editor on it. When you have edited the
message to your satisfaction, write the message out and quit,
upon which Mail will read the message back and remove the file.
Edit can be abbreviated to e.
Mail Reference Manual USD:7-19
else
Marks the end of the then-part of an if statement and the begin-
ning of the part to take effect if the condition of the if state-
ment is false.
endif
Marks the end of an if statement.
exit or xit
Leave Mail without updating the system mailbox or the file you
were reading. Thus, if you accidentally delete several messages,
you can use exit to avoid scrambling your mailbox. Exit can be
abbreviated to ex or x.
file
The same as folder. File can be abbreviated to fi.
folders
List the names of the folders in your folder directory.
folder
The folder command switches to a new mail file or folder. With
no arguments, it tells you which file you are currently reading.
If you give it an argument, it will write out changes (such as
deletions) you have made in the current file and read the new
file. Some special conventions are recognized for the name:
Name Meaning
___________________________________________
# Previous file read
% Your system mailbox
%name Name's system mailbox
& Your ~/mbox file
+folder A file in your folder directory
Folder can be abbreviated to fo.
from
The from command takes a list of messages and prints out the
header lines for each one; hence
from joe
is the easy way to display all the message headers from "joe."
From can be abbreviated to f.
headers
When you start up Mail to read your mail, it lists the message
headers that you have. These headers tell you who each message is
from, when they were received, how many lines and characters each
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message is, and the "Subject:" header field of each message, if
present. In addition, Mail tags the message header of each mes-
sage that has been the object of the preserve command with a "P."
Messages that have been saved or written are flagged with a "*."
Finally, deleted messages are not printed at all. If you wish to
reprint the current list of message headers, you can do so with
the headers command. The headers command (and thus the initial
header listing) only lists the first so many message headers. The
number of headers listed depends on the speed of your terminal.
Mail maintains a notion of the current "window" into your mes-
sages for the purposes of printing headers. Use the z command to
move forward a window, and z- to move back a window. You can move
Mail's notion of the current window directly to a particular mes-
sage by using, for example,
headers 40
to move Mail's attention to the messages around message 40.
Headers can be abbreviated to h.
help
Print a brief and usually out of date help message about the com-
mands in Mail. The man page for mail is usually more up-to-date
than either the help message or this manual. It is also a synonym
for ?.
hold
Arrange to hold a list of messages in the system mailbox, instead
of moving them to the file mbox in your home directory. If you
set the binary option hold, this will happen by default. It does
not override the delete command. Hold can be abbreviated to ho.
if Commands in your ".mailrc" file can be executed conditionally
depending on whether you are sending or receiving mail with the
if command. For example, you can do:
if receive
commands...
endif
An else form is also available:
if send
commands...
else
commands...
endif
Note that the only allowed conditions are receive and send.
ignore
N.B.: Ignore has been superseded by retain.
Add the list of header fields named to the ignore list. Header
Mail Reference Manual USD:7-21
fields in the ignore list are not printed on your terminal when
you print a message. This allows you to suppress printing of
certain machine-generated header fields, such as Via which are
not usually of interest. The Type and Print commands can be used
to print a message in its entirety, including ignored fields. If
ignore is executed with no arguments, it lists the current set of
ignored fields.
inc
Incorporate any new messages that have arrived while mail is
being read. The new messages are added to the end of the message
list, and the current message is reset to be the first new mail
message. This does not renumber the existing message list, nor
does it cause any changes made so far to be saved.
list
List the valid Mail commands. List can be abbreviated to l.
mail
Send mail to one or more people. If you have the ask option set,
Mail will prompt you for a subject to your message. Then you can
type in your message, using tilde escapes as described in section
4 to edit, print, or modify your message. To signal your satis-
faction with the message and send it, type <Control-D> at the
beginning of a line, or a . alone on a line if you set the option
dot. To abort the message, type two interrupt characters
(Control-C by default) in a row or use the ~q escape. The mail
command can be abbreviated to m.
mbox
Indicate that a list of messages be sent to mbox in your home
directory when you quit. This is the default action for messages
if you do not have the hold option set.
more
Takes a message list and invokes the pager on that list.
next or +
The next command goes to the next message and types it. If given
a message list, next goes to the first such message and types it.
Thus,
next root
goes to the next message sent by "root" and types it. The next
command can be abbreviated to simply a newline, which means that
one can go to and type a message by simply giving its message
number or one of the magic characters "^" "." or "$". Thus,
.
prints the current message and
USD:7-22 Mail Reference Manual
4
prints message 4, as described previously. Next can be abbrevi-
ated to n.
preserve
Same as hold. Cause a list of messages to be held in your system
mailbox when you quit. Preserve can be abbreviated to pre.
print
Print the specified messages. If the crt variable is set, mes-
sages longer than the number of lines it indicates are paged
through the command specified by the PAGER variable. The print
command can be abbreviated to p.
quit
Terminates the session, saving all undeleted, unsaved and unwrit-
ten messages in the user's mbox file in their login directory
(messages marked as having been read), preserving all messages
marked with hold or preserve or never referenced in their system
mailbox. Any messages that were deleted, saved, written, or saved
to mbox are removed from their system mailbox. If new mail has
arrived during the session, the message ``You have new mail'' is
given. If given while editing a mailbox file with the -f flag,
then the edit file is rewritten. A return to the Shell is
effected, unless the rewrite of edit file fails, in which case
the user can escape with the exit command. Quit can be abbrevi-
ated to q.
reply or respond
Frame a reply to a single message. The reply will be sent to the
person who sent you the message (to which you are replying), plus
all the people who received the original message, except you.
You can add people using the ~t, ~c, and ~b tilde escapes. The
subject in your reply is formed by prefacing the subject in the
original message with "Re:" unless it already began thus. If the
original message included a "reply-to" header field, the reply
will go only to the recipient named by "reply-to." You type in
your message using the same conventions available to you through
the mail command. The reply (and respond) command can be abbrevi-
ated to r.
retain
Add the list of header fields named to the retained list. Only
the header fields in the retain list are shown on your terminal
when you print a message. All other header fields are suppressed.
The Type and Print commands can be used to print a message in its
entirety. If retain is executed with no arguments, it lists the
current set of retained fields.
save
It is often useful to be able to save messages on related topics
in a file. The save command gives you the ability to do this.
Mail Reference Manual USD:7-23
The save command takes as an argument a list of message numbers,
followed by the name of the file in which to save the messages.
The messages are appended to the named file, thus allowing one to
keep several messages in the file, stored in the order they were
put there. The filename in quotes, followed by the line count and
character count is echoed on the user's terminal. An example of
the save command relative to our running example is:
s 1 2 tuitionmail
Saved messages are not automatically saved in mbox at quit time,
nor are they selected by the next command described above, unless
explicitly specified. Save can be abbreviated to s.
saveignore
saveignore is to save what ignore is to print and type. Header
fields thus marked are filtered out when saving a message by save
or when automatically saving to mbox.
saveretain
saveretain is to save what retain is to print and type. Header
fields thus marked are the only ones saved with a message when
saving by save or when automatically saving to mbox. saveretain
overrides saveignore.
set
Set an option or give an option a value. Used to customize Mail.
Section 5.3 contains a list of the options. Options can be
binary, in which case they are on or off, or valued. To set a
binary option option on, do
set option
To give the valued option option the value value, do
set option=value
There must be no space before or after the ``='' sign. If no
arguments are given, all variable values are printed. Several
options can be specified in a single set command. Set can be
abbreviated to se.
shell
The shell command allows you to escape to the shell. Shell
invokes an interactive shell and allows you to type commands to
it. When you leave the shell, you will return to Mail. The shell
used is a default assumed by Mail; you can override this default
by setting the valued option "SHELL," eg:
set SHELL=/bin/csh
Shell can be abbreviated to sh.
USD:7-24 Mail Reference Manual
size
Takes a message list and prints out the size in characters of
each message.
source
The source command reads mail commands from a file. It is useful
when you are trying to fix your ".mailrc" file and you need to
re-read it. Source can be abbreviated to so.
top
The top command takes a message list and prints the first five
lines of each addressed message. If you wish, you can change the
number of lines that top prints out by setting the valued option
"toplines." On a CRT terminal,
set toplines=10
might be preferred. Top can be abbreviated to to.
type
Same as print. Takes a message list and types out each message on
the terminal. The type command can be abbreviated to t.
unalias
Takes a list of names defined by alias commands and discards the
remembered groups of users. The group names no longer have any
significance.
undelete
Takes a message list and marks each message as not being deleted.
Undelete can be abbreviated to u.
unread
Takes a message list and marks each message as not having been
read. Unread can be abbreviated to U.
unset
Takes a list of option names and discards their remembered
values; the inverse of set.
visual
It is often useful to be able to invoke one of two editors, based
on the type of terminal one is using. To invoke a display
oriented editor, you can use the visual command. The operation
of the visual command is otherwise identical to that of the edit
command.
Both the edit and visual commands assume some default text edi-
tors. The default for "EDITOR" is /usr/bin/ex. The default for
"VISUAL" is /usr/bin/vi. These default editors can be overridden
by the valued options "EDITOR" and "VISUAL" for the standard and
screen editors. You might want to do:
Mail Reference Manual USD:7-25
set EDITOR=/bin/ed VISUAL=/usr/bin/mg
Visual can be abbreviated to v.
write
The save command always writes the entire message, including the
headers, into the file. If you want to write just the message
itself, you can use the write command. The write command has the
same syntax as the save command, and can be abbreviated to simply
w. Thus, we could write the second message by doing:
w 2 file.c
As suggested by this example, the write command is useful for
such tasks as sending and receiving source program text over the
message system. The filename in quotes, followed by additional
file information, is echoed on the user's terminal.
z Mail presents message headers in windowfuls as described under
the headers command. You can move Mail's attention forward to the
next window by giving the
z+
command. Analogously, you can move to the previous window with:
z-
5.3. Custom options
Throughout this manual, we have seen examples of binary and
valued options. This section describes each of the options in alpha-
betical order, including some that you have not seen yet. To avoid
confusion, please note that the options are either all lower case
letters or all upper case letters. When I start a sentence such as:
"Ask" causes Mail to prompt you for a subject header, I am only capi-
talizing "ask" as a courtesy to English.
EDITOR
The valued option "EDITOR" defines the pathname of the text edi-
tor to be used in the edit command and ~e escape. If not defined,
/usr/bin/ex is used.
LISTER
Pathname of the directory lister to use in the folders command.
Default is /bin/ls.
MBOX
The name of the mbox file. It can be the name of a folder. The
default is ``mbox'' in the user's home directory.
USD:7-26 Mail Reference Manual
PAGER
Pathname of the program to use for paginating output when it
exceeds crt lines. A default paginator is used if this option is
not defined.
SHELL
The valued option "SHELL" gives the path name of your shell.
This shell is used for the ! command and ~! escape. In addition,
this shell expands file names with shell metacharacters like *
and ? in them.
VISUAL
The valued option "VISUAL" defines the pathname of the screen
editor to be used in the visual command and ~v escape. If not
defined, /usr/bin/vi is used.
append
The "append" option is binary and causes messages saved in mbox
to be appended to the end rather than prepended. Normally, Mail
will put messages in mbox in the same order that the system puts
messages in your system mailbox. By setting "append," you are
requesting that mbox be appended to regardless. It is in any
event quicker to append.
ask
"Ask" is a binary option which causes Mail to prompt you for the
subject of each message you send. If you respond with simply a
newline, no subject field will be sent.
askbcc
"Askbcc" is a binary option which causes you to be prompted for
additional blind carbon copy recipients at the end of each mes-
sage. Responding with a newline shows your satisfaction with the
current list.
askcc
"Askcc" is a binary option which causes you to be prompted for
additional carbon copy recipients at the end of each message.
Responding with a newline shows your satisfaction with the
current list.
autoinc
Causes new mail to be automatically incorporated when it arrives.
Setting this is similar to issuing the inc command at each
prompt, except that the current message is not reset when new
mail arrives.
autoprint
"Autoprint" is a binary option which causes the delete command to
behave like dp -- thus, after deleting a message, the next one
will be typed automatically. This is useful when quickly scan-
ning and deleting messages in your mailbox.
Mail Reference Manual USD:7-27
crt
The valued option is used as a threshold to determine how long a
message must be before PAGER is used to read it.
debug
The binary option "debug" causes debugging information to be
displayed. Use of this option is the same as using the -d command
line flag.
dot
"Dot" is a binary option which, if set, causes Mail to interpret
a period alone on a line as the terminator of the message you are
sending.
escape
To allow you to change the escape character used when sending
mail, you can set the valued option "escape." Only the first
character of the "escape" option is used, and it must be doubled
if it is to appear as the first character of a line of your mes-
sage. If you change your escape character, then ~ loses all its
special meaning, and need no longer be doubled at the beginning
of a line.
folder
The name of the directory to use for storing folders of messages.
If this name begins with a `/' Mail considers it to be an abso-
lute pathname; otherwise, the folder directory is found relative
to your home directory.
hold
The binary option "hold" causes messages that have been read but
not manually dealt with to be held in the system mailbox. This
prevents such messages from being automatically swept into your
mbox file.
ignore
The binary option "ignore" causes <Control-C> characters from
your terminal to be ignored and echoed as @'s while you are send-
ing mail. <Control-C> characters retain their original meaning
in Mail command mode. Setting the "ignore" option is equivalent
to supplying the -i flag on the command line as described in sec-
tion 6.
ignoreeof
An option related to "dot" is "ignoreeof", which makes Mail
refuse to accept a <Control-D> as the end of a message.
"Ignoreeof" also applies to Mail command mode.
indentprefix
String used by the ~m tilde escape for indenting messages, in
place of the normal tab character (`^I'). Be sure to quote the
value if it contains spaces or tabs.
USD:7-28 Mail Reference Manual
keep
The "keep" option causes Mail to truncate your system mailbox
instead of deleting it when it is empty. This is useful if you
elect to protect your mailbox, which you would do with the shell
command:
chmod 600 /var/mail/yourname
where yourname is your login name. If you do not do this, anyone
can probably read your mail, although people usually don't.
keepsave
When you save a message, Mail usually discards it when you quit.
To retain all saved messages, set the "keepsave" option.
metoo
When sending mail to an alias, Mail makes sure that if you are
included in the alias, that mail will not be sent to you. This
is useful if a single alias is being used by all members of the
group. If however, you wish to receive a copy of all the mes-
sages you send to the alias, you can set the binary option
"metoo."
noheader
The binary option "noheader" suppresses the printing of the ver-
sion and headers when Mail is first invoked. Setting this option
is the same as using -N on the command line.
nosave
Normally, when you abort a message with two <Control-C>'s, Mail
copies the partial letter to the file "dead.letter" in your home
directory. Setting the binary option "nosave" prevents this.
Replyall
Reverses the sense of reply and Reply commands.
quiet
The binary option "quiet" suppresses the printing of the version
when Mail is first invoked, as well as printing the for example
"Message 4:" from the type command.
record
If you love to keep records, then the valued option "record" can
be set to the name of a file to save your outgoing mail. Each new
message you send is appended to the end of the file.
screen
When Mail initially prints the message headers, it determines the
number to print by looking at the speed of your terminal. The
faster your terminal, the more it prints. The valued option
"screen" overrides this calculation and specifies how many mes-
sage headers you want printed. This number is also used for
scrolling with the z command.
Mail Reference Manual USD:7-29
searchheaders
If this option is set, then a message-list specifier in the form
``/x:y'' will expand to all messages containing the substring `y'
in the header field `x'. The string search is case insensitive.
If `x' is omitted, it will default to the ``Subject'' header
field. The form ``/to:y'' is a special case, and will expand to
all messages containing the substring `y' in the ``To'', ``Cc'',
or ``Bcc'' header fields. The check for ``to'' is case sensitive,
so that ``/To:y'' can be used to limit the search for `y' to just
the ``To:'' field.
sendmail
To use an alternate mail delivery system, set the "sendmail"
option to the full pathname of the program to use. Note: this
is not for everyone! Most people should use the default delivery
system.
toplines
The valued option "toplines" defines the number of lines that the
"top" command will print out instead of the default five lines.
verbose
The binary option "verbose" causes Mail to invoke sendmail with
the -v flag, which causes it to go into verbose mode and announce
expansion of aliases, etc. Setting the "verbose" option is
equivalent to invoking Mail with the -v flag as described in sec-
tion 6.
6. Command line options
This section describes command line options for Mail and what
they are used for.
-b list
Send blind carbon copies to list.
-c list
Send carbon copies to list of users. List should be a comma
separated list of names.
-f file
Show the messages in file instead of your system mailbox. If
file is omitted, Mail reads mbox in your home directory.
-I Forces mail to run in interactive mode, even when input is not a
terminal. In particular, the special ~ command character, used
when sending mail, is only available interactively.
-i Ignore tty interrupt signals. This is particularly useful when
using mail on noisy phone lines.
-N Suppress the initial printing of headers.
USD:7-30 Mail Reference Manual
-n Inhibit reading of /etc/mail.rc upon startup.
-s string
Used for sending mail. String is used as the subject of the mes-
sage being composed. If string contains blanks, you must sur-
round it with quote marks.
-u name
Read names's mail instead of your own. Unwitting others often
neglect to protect their mailboxes, but discretion is advised.
Essentially, -u user is a shorthand way of doing -f
/var/mail/user.
-v Use the -v flag when invoking sendmail. This feature may also be
enabled by setting the the option "verbose".
The following command line flags are also recognized, but are
intended for use by programs invoking Mail and not for people.
-d Turn on debugging information. Not of general interest.
-T file
Arrange to print on file the contents of the article-id fields of
all messages that were either read or deleted. -T is for the
readnews program and should NOT be used for reading your mail.
7. Format of messages
This section describes the format of messages. Messages begin
with a from line, which consists of the word "From" followed by a user
name, followed by anything, followed by a date in the format returned
by the ctime library routine described in section 3 of the Unix
Programmer's Manual. A possible ctime format date is:
Tue Dec 1 10:58:23 1981
The ctime date may be optionally followed by a single space and a time
zone indication, which should be three capital letters, such as PDT.
Following the from line are zero or more header field lines. Each
header field line is of the form:
name: information
Name can be anything, but only certain header fields are recognized as
having any meaning. The recognized header fields are: article-id,
bcc, cc, from, reply-to, sender, subject, and to. Other header fields
are also significant to other systems; see, for example, the current
Arpanet message standard for much more information on this topic. A
header field can be continued onto following lines by making the first
character on the following line a space or tab character.
Mail Reference Manual USD:7-31
If any headers are present, they must be followed by a blank
line. The part that follows is called the body of the message, and
must be ASCII text, not containing null characters. Each line in the
message body must be no longer than 512 characters and terminated with
an ASCII newline character. If binary data must be passed through the
mail system, it is suggested that this data be encoded in a system
which encodes six bits into a printable character (i.e.: uuencode).
For example, one could use the upper and lower case letters, the
digits, and the characters comma and period to make up the 64 charac-
ters. Then, one can send a 16-bit binary number as three characters.
These characters should be packed into lines, preferably lines about
70 characters long as long lines are transmitted more efficiently.
The message delivery system always adds a blank line to the end
of each message. This blank line must not be deleted.
The UUCP message delivery system sometimes adds a blank line to
the end of a message each time it is forwarded through a machine.
It should be noted that some network transport protocols enforce
limits to the lengths of messages.
8. Glossary
This section contains the definitions of a few phrases peculiar
to Mail.
alias
An alternative name for a person or list of people.
flag An option, given on the command line of Mail, prefaced with a -.
For example, -f is a flag.
header field
At the beginning of a message, a line which contains information
that is part of the structure of the message. Popular header
fields include to, cc, and subject.
mail
A collection of messages. Often used in the phrase, "Have you
read your mail?"
mailbox
The place where your mail is stored, typically in the directory
/var/mail.
message
A single letter from someone, initially stored in your mailbox.
message list
A string used in Mail command mode to describe a sequence of mes-
sages.
USD:7-32 Mail Reference Manual
option
A piece of special purpose information used to tailor Mail to
your taste. Options are specified with the set command.
9. Summary of commands, options, and escapes
This section gives a quick summary of the Mail commands, binary
and valued options, and tilde escapes.
The following table describes the commands:
Command Description
_________________________________________________________________________
+ Same as next
- Back up to previous message
? Print brief summary of Mail commands
! Single command escape to shell
Print Type message with ignored fields
Reply Reply to author of message only
Respond Same as Reply
Type Type message with ignored fields
alias Define an alias as a set of user names
alternates List other names you are known by
chdir Change working directory, home by default
copy Copy a message to a file or folder
delete Delete a list of messages
dp Same as dt
dt Delete current message, type next message
edit Edit a list of messages
else Start of else part of conditional; see if
endif End of conditional statement; see if
exit Leave mail without changing anything
file Interrogate/change current mail file
folder Same as file
folders List the folders in your folder directory
from List headers of a list of messages
headers List current window of messages
help Same as ?
hold Same as preserve
if Conditional execution of Mail commands
ignore Set/examine list of ignored header fields
inc Incorporate new messages
list List valid Mail commands
mail Send mail to specified names
mbox Arrange to save a list of messages in mbox
more Invoke pager on message list
next Go to next message and type it
preserve Arrange to leave list of messages in system mailbox
print Print messages
quit Leave Mail; update system mailbox, mbox as appropriate
reply Compose a reply to a message
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respond Same as reply
retain Supersedes ignore
save Append messages, headers included, on a file
saveignore List of headers to ignore when using the save command
saveretain List of headers to retain when using the save command
set Set binary or valued options
shell Invoke an interactive shell
size Prints out size of message list
source Read mail commands from a file
top Print first so many (5 by default) lines of list of messages
type Same as print
unalias Remove alias
undelete Undelete list of messages
unread Marks list of messages as not been read
unset Undo the operation of a set
visual Invoke visual editor on a list of messages
write Append messages to a file, don't include headers
xit Same as exit
z Scroll to next/previous screenful of headers
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The following table describes the options. Each option is
shown as being either a binary or valued option.
Option Type Description
___________________________________________________________________________
EDITOR valued Pathname of editor for ~e and edit
LISTER valued Pathname of directory lister
MBOX valued Pathname of the mbox file
PAGER valued Pathname of pager for Print, print, Type and type
SHELL valued Pathname of shell for shell, ~! and !
VISUAL valued Pathname of screen editor for ~v, visual
append binary Always append messages to end of mbox
ask binary Prompt user for Subject: field when sending
askbcc binary Prompt user for additional BCc's at end of message
askcc binary Prompt user for additional Cc's at end of message
autoinc binary Automatically incorporate new mail
autoprint binary Print next message after delete
crt valued Minimum number of lines before using PAGER
debug binary Print out debugging information
dot binary Accept . alone on line to terminate message input
escape valued Escape character to be used instead of ~
folder valued Directory to store folders in
hold binary Hold messages in system mailbox by default
ignore binary Ignore <Control-C> while sending mail
ignoreeof binary Don't terminate letters/command input with ^D
indentprefix valued String used for indenting messages
keep binary Don't unlink system mailbox when empty
keepsave binary Don't delete saved messages by default
metoo binary Include sending user in aliases
noheader binary Suppress initial printing of version and headers
nosave binary Don't save partial letter in dead.letter
Replyall binary Reverses the sense of the [Rr]eply commands
quiet binary Suppress printing of Mail version/message numbers
record valued File to save all outgoing mail in
screen valued Size of window of message headers for z, etc.
searchheaders binary Search string for message headers
sendmail valued Choose alternate mail delivery system
toplines valued Number of lines to print in top
verbose binary Invoke sendmail with the -v flag
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The following table summarizes the tilde escapes available
while sending mail.
Escape Arguments Description
_______________________________________________________________
~! command Execute shell command
~b name ... Add names to "blind" Cc: list
~c name ... Add names to Cc: field
~d Read dead.letter into message
~e Invoke text editor on partial message
~f messages Read named messages
~F messages Same as ~f, but includes all headers
~h Edit the header fields
~m messages Read named messages, right shift by tab
~M messages Same as ~m, but includes all headers
~p Print message entered so far
~q Abort entry of letter; like <Control-C>
~r filename Read file into message
~s string Set Subject: field to string
~t name ... Add names to To: field
~v Invoke screen editor on message
~w filename Write message on file
~| command Pipe message through command
~: Mail command Execute a Mail command
~~ string Quote a ~ in front of string
The following table shows the command line flags that Mail
accepts:
Flag Description
____________________________________________________________
-b list Send blind carbon copies to list.
-c list Send carbon copies to list
-d Turn on debugging
-f [name] Show messages in name or ~/mbox
-I Force Mail to run in interactive mode
-i Ignore tty interrupt signals
-N Suppress the initial printing of headers
-n Inhibit reading of /etc/mail.rc
-s subject Use subject as subject in outgoing mail
-T file Article-id's of read/deleted messages to file
-u user Read user's mail instead of your own
-v Invoke sendmail with the -v flag
Notes: -d and -T are not for human use.
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