Next: Composing Mail, Previous: Invoking Mail, Up: mail [Contents][Index]
To read messages from a given mailbox, use one of the following ways of
invoking mail
:
mail
Read messages from your system mailbox.
mail -f
mail --file
Read messages from your mailbox ($HOME/mbox). If the --user option (see below) is also given, read messages from that user’s mbox.
mail -f path_to_mailbox
mail --file path_to_mailbox
Read messages from the specified mailbox.
mail -u user
mail --user=user
Read messages from the system mailbox belonging to user.
Please note, that usual mailbox permissions won’t allow you to use the last variant of invocation, unless you are a super-user. Similarly, the last but one variant is also greatly affected by the permissions the target mailbox has.
Notice that path_to_mailbox is not an argument to --file (-f) option, but rather the first non-optional argument on the command line. Therefore, the following three invocations are equivalent:
$ mail -fin mymbox $ mail -f mymbox -in $ mail --file -in mymbox $ mail --file -i mymbox -n
Additionally, for conformance to the GNU standards, the following form is also accepted:
$ mail --file=mymbox -i -n
Unless you have started mail with --norc command line option,
it will read the contents of the system-wide configuration file.
Then it will read the contents of user configuration file, if it exists.
For detailed description of these files, see Mail Configuration Files.
After this initial setup, mail
displays the first page of header
lines (unless the -N option has been given), followed by a prompt,
indicating that it is waiting for regular commands. Upon receiving a
command, mail
parses and executes it, displays the result on
the screen, prints the prompt and waits for the next command. This
process is continued until mail
receives any of the commands
‘quit’, ‘exit’ or the end-of-file character (ASCII 4, or
C-D).
Each message in the mailbox has a state that affects how it is retained or deleted upon termination of the program. The state is reflected in the header listing and can be changed during the session. The states are:
The message is present in the system mailbox and has not been read
by the user or moved to any other state. When mail
terminates, messages in this state are retained in the system
mailbox. If mail
was exited using the quit
command,
such messages are moved to the ‘unread’ state. If exit
command was used, their state is not changed.
The message has been present in the system mailbox for more than one
invocation of mail
and has not been read by the user or
moved to any other state. When mail
terminates, messages in
this state are retained in the system mailbox.
The message has been read by the user, i.e. processed by one of the
following commands: copy
, mbox
, next
,
pipe
, prev
, print
, Print
, struct
,
top
, type
, Type
, undelete
, or any of the
following escapes (in message compose mode): ~f
, ~m
,
~F
, ~M
.
When mail
terminates, messages in this state are handled
depending on the mailbox they are in. Read messages in the system
mailbox are saved in the ‘mbox’, unless the internal variable
‘hold’ is set. Read messages in ‘mbox’ or in any other
mailbox, excepting the system one, will be retained in their current
location.
The message has been processed by one of the following commands: ‘delete’, ‘dp’, ‘dt’. Messages in this state are ignored by any command, excepting ‘undelete’, which changes their state back to ‘read’. Upon quitting the program, deleted messages are permanently removed from the mailbox.
The message has been processed by the preserve
(hold
)
command. When mail
quits, such messages are retained in
the mailbox.
The message has been processed by one of the following commands:
save
, write
. When mail
quits, saved messages
will be removed from the mailbox, unless the ‘keepsave’ variable
is set. When operating on the system mailbox, messages in this state
are deleted, when the quit
or file
command is used
to exit the current mailbox.
Unless the mailbox is empty, exactly one of its messages will be marked as current message. Upon startup, current message is set to the first new message, if there is any, or the first unread message if there is any, or to the first message in the mailbox. In the header listing, current message is marked with the ‘>’ sign at the beginning of the line. Current message is changed by any of the following commands: ‘dp’, ‘prev’, ‘next’.
• Command Syntax | Syntax of mail internal commands. | |
• Quitting the Program | ||
• Obtaining Online Help | ||
• Moving Within a Mailbox | ||
• Changing mailbox/directory | ||
• Controlling Header Display | ||
• Displaying Information | ||
• Displaying Messages | ||
• Marking Messages | ||
• Disposing of Messages | ||
• Saving Messages | ||
• Editing Messages | ||
• Aliasing | ||
• Replying | ||
• Controlling Sender Fields | ||
• Incorporating New Mail | ||
• Shell Escapes |
Next: Composing Mail, Previous: Invoking Mail, Up: mail [Contents][Index]