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alex(1) General Commands Manual alex(1) NAME alex - extract addresses from message headers (only available within the message handling system, mh) SYNOPSIS alex [ +folder ] [ msgs ] [ options ] DESCRIPTION The address line extraction utility alex extracts electronic mail ad- dresses from message headers and prints the addresses on your screen or places them, with a specified alias name, in an alias file. By default, alex searches for addresses in the current message in the current folder. You can list the messages you wish alex to search giv- ing a msgs argument. You can also search messages in a different folder by giving a +folder argument. You define the fields from which you want addresses by using combina- tions of field names with the -field option. You can also supply an address yourself as a value to the -address option. Results are printed either to your screen or to a file in mh-alias(4) format. Where there is an address group in the alias file with an alias name identical to one you have specified in an alex command, it may be re- placed or the new addresses appended. A copy of the original alias file is kept. By default, alex searches the Reply-to:, Sender:, From: and To: header fields in that order until an address is found. You can set up your own default values for alex in your .mh_profile file; see mh_profile(4). When giving options to the alex command, generally the shortest unique abbreviation suffices. FLAGS -address string Accepts an address that you type in, rather than taking an address from a message. If any -field option is specified, it is ignored. -alias filename Specifies the name of the alias file, in which aliases are placed. You must provide a file name or a dash (-) as an ar- gument with this option. There is no default value. If the value given for this option is -, or the option is not speci- fied, alex will print the output to your screen. If you do not give the full pathname of your alias file, alex will look for the alias file in your Mail directory, as specified in the Path field of your .mh_profile file. If alex cannot lo- cate the alias file in the directory that you specify, it will ask you whether or not you wish to create one. You can set up an alias file to be used by alex in your .mh_profile; see mh_profile(4) for more information. Like other mail commands, alex uses the Aliasfile entry to find the alias file. -compress -nocompress Prevents any repetition of the same address in the output of an alex command. You can use this option when there are mul- tiple occurrences of an address in an address group and you want just one occurrence of it in your alias. The default is -nocompress. -field name[ /name ... ] -nofield Specifies the name of a header field. The name of the field is not case-sensitive. If you specify this option without providing an argument, the default values are: -field reply- to/sender/from/to. You can set up your own default values for the -field option in your .mh_profile. See mh_profile(4). Examples of field names are From, cc and To. You must not type a colon after the name of a field. When more field names follow, in the form /name, the message header is searched for each of the fields in turn until one is found. Only the first header field found to contain an address is used; the rest are ignored. The option -nofield excludes the named field. The special name, all, means all fields, and can be used as a value for the -nofield option to override any default order of header fields, otherwise -field values are appended to any default values. -global Specifies that any address replacements or appendings will apply to all occurrences of that alias name. Normally, if an alias name is entered in the alias file more than once, any actions performed by alex are performed only on the first oc- currence of that alias name. The -global option ensures that any changes are made to all occurrences of the alias. When- ever this option is specified, a message is broadcast to your screen telling you how many entries in the alias file have been changed. -help Prints a list of the valid options for this command. -name name Specifies the alias name for address information extracted. The alex command appends a colon (:) to the name as required by mh-alias(4). If you do not specify this option,alex will print extracted addresses to your screen. If you specify this option, you must provide an argument; there is no de- fault value. -query -noquery Extracts addresses interactively. Before adding each address of a list of extracted addresses to an alias group, the mail system will ask you whether you wish the address to be added. The query prompt is written on the standard error output. The default is -noquery. -replace -noreplace Replaces existing alias with the new list of addresses. By default, if there is an existing alias with the same name as the one you are trying to create, alex appends the new ad- dress list to the old alias. If an address appears in both address groups, it is still appended, so that it appears twice in the new alias. You can specify this explicitly by using the -noreplace option. If you specify the -replace op- tion, the new list of addresses replaces the existing group. The default is -noreplace. -width n Specifies the maximum width of your alias file line. If an alias group extends beyond this length, it is continued on the next line, with a backslash (\) at end of the first line. This option affects the format of each individual entry when it is implemented; any subsequent or previous entries in the alias file remain the same. The default is 72 characters. RESTRICTIONS Because the -nofield option can take the value all as an argument, alex will not recognize a header field called All. If you wish to use such a header field, you should call it X-all. If a command line contains contradictory arguments then the last value specified is used. For example, in the following command, alex only uses the options -name fred and -noreplace: % alex -name sam -name fred -replace -noreplace EXAMPLES This example takes the address from the From field of the current mes- sage, and places it in your alias file with the alias name bob: % alex -field from -alias aliases -name bob The following example shows what happens if you specify an alias file that does not exist. You are asked whether you want to create the file; enter y to create it: % alex -field from -name bob -alias aliases Create alias file "HOME/Mail/aliases"? y The next example takes addresses from two fields, From and cc, and saves them as the alias sales_team: % alex -field from -field cc -alias aliases -name sales_team FILES $HOME/.mh_profile Your user profile. RELATED INFORMATION ali(1), mh(1), pick(1), mh-alias(4), mh_profile(4) delim off alex(1)