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mailx(1) General Commands Manual mailx(1) NAME mailx, Mail - Sends and receives mail SYNOPSIS Sending Mail mailx [-dinvF] [-h number] [-r address] [-s subject] user... Mail [-dinvF] [-h number] [-r address] [-s subject] user... Handling Mail mailx [-dinNveH] -f [file] Mail [-dinNveH] -f [file] mailx [-dinNveH] [-u user] Mail [-dinNveH] [-u user] The mailx and Mail commands allow you to read, write, send, receive, store, and discard mail messages. [DIGITAL] See the section Internationalization under the DESCRIPTION section for more information about the internationalization features of the mailx command. STANDARDS Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry stan- dards as follows: mailx(): XPG4 Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about in- dustry standards and associated tags. OPTIONS Causes the mailx command to display debugging information. Messages are not sent while in debug mode. Tests for the presence of mail. The mailx command prints nothing and exits with a successful return code if there is mail to read. Reads in the contents of your mbox or the spec- ified file for processing. When you quit, mailx writes undeleted mes- sages back to this file. Records the message in a file named after the first recipient. Overrides the record option, if set. Specifies the number of network "hops" made so far. This is provided for network software to avoid infinite loops. Prints header summary only. Ignores tty Interrupt signals. Useful when using mailx on noisy phone lines. Inhibits the reading of the /usr/share/lib/Mail.rc file. Suppresses the initial printing of headers. Passes address to the network deliv- ery software. All tilde commands are disabled. Specifies a subject for a message to be created. Activates mailx for a specified users mailbox; short way of doing mailx -f /var/spool/mail/user. You must have access permission to the specified user's mailbox. Puts mailx into verbose mode. Details of delivery are displayed on the user's terminal. DESCRIPTION The mailx and Mail commands allow you to do the following: Compose a message and send it. Receive a message and look at it. Store received messages in your mailbox or in folders. Discard messages. The mailx command uses two types of mailboxes: the system mailbox and the personal mailbox. The system mailbox is a file assigned to a par- ticular user. The file is created when mail arrives for a user ID, and it is deleted when all the messages are removed from the file. It is not deleted if you have specified the keep option in your file, or if the /var/spool/mail directory has no write permissions for other. A separate system mailbox can exist for each user ID on the system. The mailx command keeps all system mailboxes in the directory /var/spool/mail. Each system mailbox is named by the user ID associ- ated with it. For example, if your user ID is jeanne, then your system mailbox is /var/spool/mail/jeanne. The personal mailbox is a file assigned to a particular user. The mailx command creates a file with the name $HOME/mbox when you receive mail from the system mailbox. For example, if your home directory is /u/lance, the mailx command creates the file /u/lance/mbox as your per- sonal mailbox. The system deletes this file when all messages are re- moved from the personal mailbox. When you use the mailx command to view mail in your system mailbox, the mailx command automatically puts all messages that you have read but did not delete into your personal mailbox. The messages remain in your personal mailbox until you move them to a folder or delete them. Folders provide a way to save messages in an organized fashion. You can create as many folders as you need. Name each folder according to the subject matter of the messages that it contains. Using the mailx command, you can put a message into a folder from your system mailbox, from your personal mailbox, from the dead.letter file, or from another folder. To send a message to one or more persons, enter mailx on the command line with arguments that are the network addresses of the people you want to receive the message. When mailx starts, you can type the mes- sage using an editor such as ed. When you are finished with the mes- sage, press <Return> at the end of a line, and use an End-of-File key sequence at the beginning of the next line to exit the editor and send the message. When mail arrives for you from another user, the mail system puts the mail in your system mailbox (/var/spool/mail/user). The command shell will notify you that mail has arrived before displaying its next prompt (that is, notification is synchronous), provided that the MAIL environ- ment variable is set and the interval specified by MAILCHECK (mail for csh) has elapsed since the shell last checked for mail. If you are logged in, the shell sends a message to your terminal to tell you that new mail has arrived. If you are not logged in, a message is sent to your terminal the next time you log in. The notification message is the value of the MAILMSG environment variable. The default message is as follows: [YOU HAVE NEW MAIL] To look at the contents of your mailbox, enter the mailx command with- out options on the command line. The program displays a listing of the messages in your mailbox and allows you to look at them, reply to them, save them, dispose of them, and so on. [DIGITAL] DIGITAL UNIX provides locking for the mailbox files. The style of locking used depends on how it is set in the rc.config file. For more information, see the Network Administration manual. Reading Incoming Mail To receive and read incoming mail, enter mailx with no arguments: mailx The mailx command then checks your system mailbox (/var/spool/mail/user) and displays a one-line entry for each message in the system mailbox similar to the following: "/var/spool/mail/geo": 2 messages 2 new >N 1 amy Thu Sep 17 14:36 13/359 "Dept Meeting" N 2 amy Thu Sep 17 16:28 13/416 "Dept Meeting Delayed" ? The > (right angle bracket) indicates the current message, or the mes- sage that subcommands act on if you do not specify a message number or list of message numbers. The first field for each message contains a one-letter indicator of the status of the message. Possible indicators are as follows: The message is stored in your personal mailbox. The message is new. The message is held (preserved) in your system mail- box. You have read the message. The message is unread. The message was listed in the mailbox before, but you have not looked at the con- tents of the message. You have saved or written the message to a file or folder. The message was read, but was not deleted or saved. The other fields in the listing (in order) represent: The number that mailbox subcommands use to refer to the message. User address of the sender. Date the message was received, including day of the week, month, day, and time. Size of the message in number of lines and char- acters, including header information. The contents of the subject field of the message, if the message has one. From the mailbox prompt (?), you can enter subcommands to look at, re- ply to, save, discard, or otherwise manage the contents of the mailbox. To display a summary of some of the subcommands that you can use to handle mail in your mailbox, enter a ? (question mark) at the mailbox prompt. Note that the behavior of the <Return> key has changed for XPG4 compliance. Using this key with no following argument now causes the current message to be displayed, and not the next message. Many mailbox subcommands allow you to specify groups of messages upon which to perform the subcommand. Subcommands that allow groups of mes- sages use the argument message_list in the command format. For exam- ple, the format of the from (or f) subcommand (display information about messages) appears as: ? from essage_list] In this format, message_list can be one of the following: One or more message numbers separated by spaces. For example: ? f 1 2 4 7 A range of message numbers indicated by the first and last numbers in the range separated by a dash. For example, the following subcommand: ? f 2-5 is the same as: ? f 2 3 4 5 An example of one or more addresses separated by spaces to apply the subcommand to messages received from those addresses follows: ? f amy geo@zeus The characters entered for an address need not match the address exactly. They must only be contained in the address field of the messages in either uppercase or lowercase letters. There- fore, the request for address amy matches all of the following addresses (and many others): amy AmY amy@zeus hamy A string, preceded by a / (slash), to match against the Subject: field of the messages follows: ? f /meet This applies the subcommand to all messages whose Subject: field contains the letters meet in uppercase or lowercase. The charac- ters entered for a match pattern do not have to match the Sub- ject: field exactly. They must only be contained in the Sub- ject: field of the messages in either uppercase or lowercase. Therefore, the request for subject meet matches all of the fol- lowing subjects (and many others): Meeting on Thursday Come to meeting tomorrow MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS The special character (dot) addresses the current message, * (asterisk) addresses all messages, ^ (circumflex) addresses the first undeleted message, and $ (dollar sign) addresses the last message. The character sequence :c addresses all messages of type c, where c is one of the following: Deleted messages New messages Old messages Read messages Un- read messages All commands that take a message list will default to the current mes- sage number if no list is specified. When the mailx command is processing a mailbox, the mailbox prompt (?) is displayed to indicate that it is waiting for input. When this prompt is displayed, you can enter any of the following mailbox subcom- mands. The subcommand abbreviation in parentheses can be used instead of the full subcommand name. Echoes the number of the current message. Allows you to write comments in mail script files. Goes to the previ- ous message and displays it. If given a number argument of n, goes to the nth previous message and displays it. Displays a brief summary of mailbox subcommands. Executes shell_command. Displays all currently defined aliases. With the argument of a previously defined alias, dis- plays the expansion of the alias. With two arguments (alias and ad- dress_list), creates a new alias or changes an old alias. Identical to the group subcommand. Informs mailx that the addresses listed in al- ternate_list all refer to you. The alternates subcommand is useful if you have accounts on several machines. Then, when you reply to mes- sages, mailx does not send a copy of the message to any of the ad- dresses given in alternate_list. If you enter the alternate subcommand with no argument, mailx displays the current set of alternate names. Changes your working directory to directory. If no directory is given, it changes to your login directory. Appends each message in mes- sage_list in turn to the end of file. Displays the filename in quotes, followed by the line count and character count, on your terminal. Does not mark the appended messages for deletion when you quit. Saves the specified messages in a file whose name is derived from the author of the message to be saved, without marking the messages as saved. Other- wise equivalent to the Save subcommand. Marks the messages in mes- sage_list to be deleted when you quit mailx. Deleted messages are not saved in mbox, nor are they available for most other subcommands. How- ever, you can restore messages that you have deleted while in the same mailbox session (see the undelete subcommand). If you delete a message and either change to another mailbox or quit the mailbox with the quit subcommand, the deleted message cannot be recalled. Identical to the ignore subcommand. Deletes the current message and displays the next message. If there is no next message, mailx displays the message, at EOF. Identical to the dp subcommand. Displays the character string string on the command line. Invokes the alternate editor that you can define with the set EDITOR= statement and loads message_list into the editor. When you exit the editor, any changes made during the editing session are saved in the messages in message_list. The default editor is /usr/bin/ex. Exits to the shell without changing the mailbox being processed. The mailbox returns to the condition that it was in when mailx was started. Messages marked to be deleted are not deleted. Identical to the xit subcommand. Identical to the folder subcommand. Switches to a new mail file or folder. With no arguments, displays the name of the mailbox that you are currently reading. If an argument is included, it stores the current mailbox with changes (such as messages deleted) and reads in the new mailbox specified by the name argument. Identical to the file subcommand. Some special conventions are recognized for the name: Refers to the previous file. Refers to the system mailbox (/var/spool/mail/user). Refers to your personal mailbox ($HOME/mbox). Refers to a file in your folder directory (deter- mined by the value of the folder option; see Enabling and Dis- abling Options). Lists the names of the folders in your folder directory (see the folder option in Enabling and Disabling Op- tions). Responds to a message, recording the response in a file whose name is derived from the author of the message. Overrides the record option, if set. (See also the Followup, Save, and Copy subcommands and the outfolder option.) Responds to the first message in message_list, sending the message to the author of each message in message_list. The subject line is taken from the first message and the response is recorded in a file whose name is derived from the author of the first message. (See also the followup, Save, and Copy commands and the outfolder option.) Displays the headers of messages in message_list. Identical to the alias subcommand. Lists the headers in the current group of messages (each group of messages contains 20 messages by de- fault; change this with the set screen= statement). If the mail- box contains more messages than can be displayed on the screen at one time, information about only the first group of messages is displayed. To see information about the rest of the mes- sages, use the h subcommand with a message number that is in the next range of messages, or use the z subcommand to change the current message group. Displays a brief summary of mailbox sub- commands. Identical to the ? (question mark) subcommand. Marks each message in message_list to be saved in your system mailbox (/var/spool/mail/user) instead of in $HOME/mbox. Does not override the delete subcommand. Identical to the preserve subcommand. Construction for conditional execution of mailx subcommands. Subcommands following if are executed if condition is TRUE. Subcommands following else are executed if condition is not TRUE. The else is not required. The endif subcommand ends the construction and is required. The condition can be re- ceive (receiving mail) or send (sending mail). Adds the header fields in field_list to the list of fields to be ignored. Ig- nored fields are not displayed when you look at a message with the type or print subcommands. Use this subcommand to suppress machine-generated header fields. Use the Type and Print subcom- mands 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. Identical to the discard subcom- mand. Displays a list of valid mailx subcommands. Lists other names for the local host. Activates the mail editor to allow you to create and send a message to people specified in ad- dress_list. The newly created message is independent from any received messages. Indicates that the messages in message_list be sent to your personal mailbox when you quit. This operation is the default action for messages that you have looked at if you are looking at your system mailbox and the hold option is not set. Displays the messages inmessage_list using the defined pager program to control the display to the screen. Identical to the page subcommand. Like more, but also displays ignored header fields. (See more and ignore.) Marks each message in message_list as not having been read. Identical to the New, un- read, and Unread subcommands. Marks each message in mes- sage_list as not having been read. Identical to the new, unread, and Unread subcommands. Makes the next message in the mailbox the current message, and displays that message. With an argument list, it displays the next matching message. Displays the mes- sages in message_list using the defined pager program to control the display to the screen. Identical to the more subcommand. Like the page subcommand, but also displays ignored header fields. Identical to the More subcommand. Pipes the message through shell_command. The message is treated as if it were read. If no arguments are given, the current message is piped through the command specified by the value of the cmd option. If the page option is set, a formfeed character is inserted af- ter each message. Identical to the hold subcommand. Displays the messages in message_list. Identical to the type subcommand, or simply pressing the <Return> key with no argument. Like print, but also displays ignored header fields. (See print and ignore.) Identical to the Type subcommand. Ends the session and returns to the shell. All messages that were not deleted or saved are stored in your personal mailbox ($HOME/mbox). All mes- sages marked with hold or preserve and those messages that you did not look at are saved in the system mailbox (/var/spool/mail/user). If the quit subcommand is given while editing a mailbox file with the -f option, then the edit file is saved with the changes. If the edit file cannot be saved, mailx does not exit. Use the exit subcommand to exit without saving the changes. Allows you to reply to the sender of message and to all others who received copies of message. Identical to the respond subcommand. Allows you to reply only to the sender of message. Identical to the Respond subcommand. Allows you to re- ply to the sender of message and to all others who received copies of message. Identical to the reply subcommand. Allows you to reply only to the sender of message. Identical to the Re- ply subcommand. Adds the header fields in field_list to the list of fields to be retained. Retained fields are displayed when you look at a message with the type or print subcommands. Use this subcommand to define which header fields you want dis- played. Use the Type and Print subcommands to print a message in its entirety, including fields that are not retained. If re- tain is executed with no arguments, it lists the current set of retained fields. Saves message_list, including header informa- tion, to file (or to a folder). If file already exists, mes- sage_list is appended to file. Displays the filename and the size of the file when the operation is complete. If you save a message to a file, that message is not returned to the system mailbox nor saved in your personal mailbox when you quit the mailx command. If a filename is not specified, the mailx com- mand saves the messages in your personal mailbox. Saves the specified messages in a file whose name is derived from the au- thor of the first message. The name of the file is taken to be the author's name with all network addressing stripped off. (See also the Copy, followup, and Followup subcommands, and the outfolder option.) Displays the options that are currently en- abled. If arguments are specified, sets options in option_list (a list of binary options, those that are either set or not set); or sets an option that must be assigned a value. (See En- abling and Disabling Options for a description of valid op- tions.) Invokes an interactive version of the shell. Displays the sizes in lines and characters of the messages in mes- sage_list. Reads and executes the mailx commands from file. Displays the top few lines of the messages specified by mes- sage_list. The number of lines displayed is determined by the valued option toplines and defaults to 5. Marks the messages in message_list to be moved from your system mailbox to your per- sonal mailbox when you quit the mailx command, even though you have not read the listed messages. The messages appear in your personal mailbox as unread messages. When you use touch, the last message in message_list becomes the current message. Dis- plays the messages in message_list. Identical to the print sub- command. Like type, but also displays ignored header fields. (See type and ignore.) Identical to the Print subcommand. Deletes the specified alias names. If a specified alias does not exist, the results are unspecified. Removes the messages in message_list from the list of messages to be deleted when you quit mailx. Without a message_list, undelete recalls the last deleted message. Marks each message in message_list as not hav- ing been read. Identical to the new, New, and Unread subcom- mands. Marks each message in message_list as not having been read. Identical to the new, New, and unread subcommands. Dis- cards the values of the options specified in option_list. This action is the inverse of the set subcommand. Displays the ver- sion banner for the mailx command. Invokes the visual editor and loads message_list into the editor. (This editor can be de- fined with the set VISUAL= statement.) When you exit the editor, any changes made during the editing session are saved back to the messages in message_list. Appends the messages specified in message_list to file. Displays the filename and the size of the file when the operation is complete. Does not include message headers in the file. Identical to the exit subcommand. Changes the current message group (group of 20 messages) and displays the headers of the messages in that group. If a + or no argument is given, then headers in the next group are shown. If a - ar- gument is given, the headers in the previous group are shown. Sending Mail You can use the mailx command in one of two ways to send information. You can use the mailx command's built-in editor to both compose and send a short message. You can also use the mailx command to send any text file to another user. The file can be a letter you have written using your favorite editor, a source file for a program you have writ- ten, or any other file in text format. The mailx command provides a line-oriented editor for composing mes- sages. This editor allows you to enter each line of the message and then press <Return> to get a new line to enter more text. You cannot change the text after you press <Return>. However, before you press <Return>, you can change text on the current line by using <Backspace> and <Delete> to erase the text and then enter the replacement text. Although you cannot change text on a line once you have pressed <Re- turn>, you can change the contents of your message before sending it by using the visual or edit subcommand to edit the message. By default, mailx treats lines beginning with the ~ (tilde) character as special while you are composing a message. For instance, entering ~m on a line by itself places a copy of the current message into the response, shifting it to the right by one tab stop. Other escapes set up subject fields, add and delete recipients of the message, and allow you to escape to an editor to revise the message, or to a shell to run other commands. You can change the Escape character to something other than a tilde with the set escape= statement. To view a summary of many useful commands, enter ~? on a line by itself while in the mail editor. The following list provides a summary of the mail editor commands. Use these commands only while in the mail editor. The editor recognizes commands only if you enter them at the beginning of a new line. Es- capes to command mode. Displays a summary of the mailx subcommands. Executes the shell command and returns to the message. Simulates End- of-File (terminates message input). Performs the command-level re- quest. Valid only when sending a message while reading mail. Inserts the autograph string from the sign= option into the message. Inserts the autograph string from the Sign= option into the message. Adds names in address_list to the list of people to receive blind copies of the message. Can only be used to add to (not to change or delete) the contents of the Bcc: list. Adds names in address_list to the list of people to receive copies of the message. Can only be used to add to (not to change or delete) the contents of the Cc: list. Dumps core. Appends the file dead.letter from your home directory to the current end of the message. Invokes the alternate editor using the text of the current message as input. (This editor can be defined with the set ED- ITOR= statement.) When you exit that editor, you return to the mail ed- itor, where you can continue appending text to the message, or you can send the message by quitting the mailx command. Includes one or more additional messages in the current message to forward to another user. This subcommand reads each message in message_list and appends it to the end of the current message, but it does not indent the appended messages. This subcommand is also used to append messages for reference when the margins are too wide to imbed with the ~m subcommand. The ~f subcommand works only if you entered the mail editor from the mailbox prompt using the mail subcommand, the reply subcommand, or the Reply subcommand. Performs the same operation as the ~f command escape, ex- cept that all headers are included in the message, regardless of previ- ous discard, ignore, and retain commands. Allows you to add or to change information in all of the header fields. The system displays each of the four header fields, one at a time. You can view the con- tents of each field and delete or add information to that field. Press <Return> to save any changes to that field and to display the next field and its contents. Inserts the value of the named option into the text of the message. For example, ~A is equivalent to ~i Sign. Reads message_list into the current messagefor reference purposes. This sub- command reads each message in message_list and appends it to the cur- rent message. The included message is indented one tab character from the normal left margin of the message. This subcommand works only if you entered the mail editor from the mailbox prompt using the mail sub- command, the reply subcommand, or the Reply subcommand. If no messages are specified, it reads the current message. Performs the same opera- tion as the ~m command escape, except that all headers are included in the message, regardless of previous discard, ignore, and retain com- mands. Displays the message as it currently exists, prefaced by the message header fields. Quits the editor, aborting the message being created without sending it. Saves the message in the dead.letter file in your home directory, unless the nosave option is set. The previous contents of the dead.letter file are overwritten by the partially com- pleted message. You can also quit the editor by using the Interrupt key se- quence. Reads the named file into the message. If the argument begins with !, the rest of the string is taken as an arbitrary system command and is executed, with the standard output in- serted into the message. Changes the Subject: field to the phrase specified in string. Adds the addresses in address_list to the To: field of the message. Can only be used to add to (not to change or delete) the contents of the To: list. Invokes the visual editor using the text of the current message as the input file. (This editor can be defined using the set VISUAL= state- ment.) When you exit that editor, you return to the mail editor, where you can continue appending text to the message, or you can send the message by quitting the mailx command. Writes the mes- sage to the named file. Exits as with ~q, except the message is not saved in dead.letter. Pipes the message through command as a filter. If command gives no output or terminates abnormally, it retains the original text of the message. Otherwise, the output of command replaces the current message. The fmt command is often used as command to format the message. Allows you to use the ~ (tilde) character in a message without it being inter- preted as a command prefix. The sequence ~~ (two tildes) re- sults in only one ~ being sent in the message. Customizing the Mail Program The system manager uses the /usr/share/lib/Mail.rc file to define the initial configuration for the mailx command. The subcommands in this file override the default characteristics of the mailx command for all users on the system. Although the initial configuration can meet the needs of most users, you can alter it by creating the $HOME/.mailrc file. Subcommands in this file override similar subcommands in /usr/share/lib/Mail.rc when you run the mailx command. The following subcommands are not legal in the start-up file: !, Copy, edit, fol- lowup, Followup, hold, mail, preserve, reply, Reply, shell, and visual. There are four mail subcommands that are most commonly used to alter the characteristics of the mailx session: set, unset, alias, and ig- nore. The set and unset subcommands enable and disable mail options, the alias subcommand shortens how you address mail, and the ignore sub- command suppresses message header fields. Enabling and Disabling Options The following are environment variables taken from the execution envi- ronment and are not alterable within mailx: The name of the locale for performing character conversions on outgoing messages. The pathname of the user's home directory. The name of the locale for displaying mail messages. The name of the start-up file. The default is $HOME/.mailrc. Use the set subcommand to enable options and the unset subcommand to disable options. Options can be either binary or valued. Binary op- tions are either set or unset, while valued options can be set to a specific value. You can set options by placing set subcommand lines in your $HOME/.mailrc file. The syntax for enabling options using the set subcommand is as follows: set [option_list|option=value] The syntax for disabling options using the unset subcommand is as fol- lows: unset [option_list] The following is a list of binary options (those that can be set or un- set): Off by default; all network names with the same login name are treated as being the same. Causes messages saved in mbox to be ap- pended (added to the end) rather than prepended (added to the begin- ning). Causes mailx to prompt you for the subject of each message you send. If you respond with a newline (carriage return), no subject field is set. This option is enabled by default. Causes mailx to prompt you for the address of people to receive blind carbon copies of the message. Responding with a newline indicates satisfaction with the current list. The default is noaskbcc. Causes you to be prompted for the addresses of people to receive copies of the message. Responding with a newline indicates your satisfaction with the current list. Prompts for subject if it is not specified on the command line with the -s option. Identical to ask. Causes the delete subcommand to behave like dp. Thus, after deleting a message, the next one is typed automat- ically. Enables the special-case treatment of ! (exclamation points) in escape command lines as in vi. The default is nobang. Causes mailx to display debugging information. The mailx command does not send mail while in debug mode. Same as specifying -d on the command line. Causes mailx to interpret a period alone on a line as the terminator of a message you are sending. Reverses the meaning of the R and r com- mands. The default is noflipr. Enables printing of the header summary when entering mailx. This option is enabled by default. Holds messages in the system mailbox by default. Causes Interrupt signals from your terminal to be ignored and echoed as @'s. Makes mailx refuse to accept End-of-File key sequence as the end of a message or as the quit subcom- mand. Related to the dot subcommand. Truncates the mailbox to zero length when it is empty, instead of removing it. This option is dis- abled by default. Keeps messages that have been saved in other files in the mailbox, instead of deleting them. The default is nokeepsave. Causes the sender to be included in the alias expansion, and thus re- ceives copies of messages. Usually, when an alias containing the sender is expanded, the sender is removed from the expansion. Used when re- plying to a message sent to several users and prevents the addresses of the recipients from being made relative to the address of the original author. You can use this variable only on a network where all systems can connect to one another directly. Prevents mailx from copying the partial letter to the file dead.letter in your home directory when a message is terminated with two Interrupt key sequences. Causes the files used to record outgoing messages to be located in the directory specified by the folder option unless the pathname is absolute. The default is nooutfolder. (See the folder option and the Save, Copy, followup, and Followup subcommands.) Inserts a formfeed after each message sent through the pipe when used with the pipe command. The de- fault is nopage. Suppresses the printing of the program banner when mailx starts. (The banner is the line that shows the name of the mail program.) Reverses the sense of the reply and Reply mailbox subcom- mands. Enables saving of messages in dead.letter on interrupt or de- livery error. (See DEAD= for a description of this file. This option is enabled by default.) Waits for the background mailer to finish be- fore returning. The default is nosendwait. Prints the recipient's name instead of the author's name when displaying the header summary and the message is from the user. Runs mailx in verbose mode; the ac- tual delivery of messages is displayed on the user's terminal. Same as using the -v option on the command line. The following is a list of valued options (those that can be assigned a value). The syntax for assigning values is set option=value. Sets the default command for the pipe subcommand. There is no default value. Off by default; used to convert uucp addresses for sendmail. Causes the paging program to automatically be invoked for messages that exceed number lines. Specifies the name of the file in which to save partial letters in case of untimely interrupt or delivery errors. The default is $HOME/dead.letter. Defines the text editor invoked by the ~e and edit subcommands. The absolute pathname must be given. The default editor is /usr/bin/ex. Defines a character to use in the place of ~ (tilde) to denote escapes. Sets the locale for performing character conversion on outgoing messages. The default is None. Defines the name of the directory to use for storing folders of messages. If this name begins with a / (slash), mailx considers it to be an absolute pathname; otherwise, the folder directory is found relative to your home directory. Specifies a string that is prefixed to each line in- serted into the message by the ~m command escape. The default string is one <Tab> character. Sets the locale for displaying mail messages. The default is C. Specifies the command (and arguments) to use when listing the contents of the folder directory. The default is ls. Specifies the name of the file in which to save messages that have been read. The exit subcommand overrides this function, as does saving the message explicitly in another file. The default is $HOME/mbox. Speci- fies the pathname of the paging program to use for the more subcommand or when the crt option is set. If you do not specify a value for PAGER, the system uses /usr/bin/pg. Sets the command mode prompt to string. The default is ?. Specifies the pathname of the file (rela- tive to $HOME) used to record all outgoing mail. A copy of all the mes- sages you send out is saved in this file. Review this file periodi- cally and delete all unnecessary messages. The mailx subcommands do not create directories, so any directo- ries included in the pathname must already exist before using this subcommand. Do not include the home directory as part of the pathname. If record is not defined, then copies of outgoing mail are not saved. Controls how many lines of the message list are displayed at a time. You can set this option to show a cer- tain number of lines on the screen. Each message in your mailbox has a one-line header in the message list. If you have more than 24 messages, the first headers from the message list scroll past the top of your screen whenever you display the list. Specifies an alternative command for delivering mail. Specifies the path- name of the shell to use in the ! and ~! subcommands. If this option is not defined, your default shell is used. Specifies the variable inserted into the text of a message when the ~a (autograph) subcommand is given. (See also the ~i tilde es- cape.) There is no default value. Specifies the variable in- serted into the text of a message when the ~A subcommand is given. (See also the ~i tilde escape.) There is no default value. Specifies the number of lines of a message to be dis- played with the top subcommand; normally, the first five lines are displayed. Specifies the pathname of the text editor to use in the visual and ~v subcommands. The default pathname is /usr/bin/vi. Creating Aliases and Distribution Lists If you send mail on a large network or often send the same message to a large number of people, entering long addresses for each receiver can become tedious. To simplify this process, you can create an alias or a distribution list in your $HOME/.mailrc file. An alias is a name you define that can be used in place of a user ad- dress when you address mail. A distribution list is a name that you define that can be used in place of a group of user addresses when you address mail. Aliases and distribution lists are used the same way and defined in similar ways; the only difference is the number of addresses defined for an alias (one address) and a distribution list (more than one ad- dress). Changing the Information at the Top of a Message You can use the ignore subcommand to suppress message header fields that are normally displayed when you read a message using the type or print subcommands. The four message header fields are To, Subject, Cc, and Bcc. The syntax of the ignore subcommand is as follows: ignore [field_list] Note that fields are specified without a trailing : (colon). You can include the fields you want to ignore in your $HOME/.mailrc file. Internationalization [DIGITAL] The mailx command supports codeset conversion of mail mes- sages between the mail interchange code (specified by the EXCODE envi- ronment variable) used to transmit messages to other hosts and the ap- plication code (specified by the LANG environment variable) used by the user. For example, if the mail interchange code is ISO-2022-JP and the application code is eucJP, the mailx program converts incoming messages from ISO-2022-JP to the Japanese EUC character set when displaying them and converts outgoing mail message from the Japanese EUC character set to ISO-2022-JP. To prevent data loss, incoming mail messages are stored in the mail folders as received, without conversion. The conversion takes place when you display or extract mail messages. To encode the mail interchange code information, new header lines are added to the outgoing mail messages. For example, if the mail inter- change code is ISO-2022-JP, the following additional header lines are added: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-2022-JP The charset field of the Content-Type header line provides the mail in- terchange code information. For non-ISO codesets, the prefix X- is added to the character set name for identification purposes. For exam- ple: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=X-eucJP For incoming mail messages, the mail interchange to be used is deter- mined by the charset field of the additional header lines, if present. For outgoing mail messages, the following rules determine the mail in- terchange code to be used: The EXCODE environment variable. The excode valued option defined in $HOME/.mailrc or /usr/share/lib/Mail.rc The application code is determined from the codeset part of the follow- ing locale information: The LANG environment variable. The lang valued option defined in $HOME/.mailrc or /usr/share/lib/Mail.rc Defaults to C. Note that you must specify a mail interchange code to do character con- version. There are no defaults. All messages associated with conversion are informational only. The mail messages in question are still delivered or received. The excode and lang options are recognized only within $HOME/.mailrc or /usr/share/lib/Mail.rc. Setting these options within mailx has no ef- fect. EXAMPLES To save a message to a folder, enter the following at the mailbox prompt (?): save 1 +procedures The following message is displayed: /u/jay/doc/procedures [Ap- pended] 32/947 In this example, message 1 was added to the end of the folder procedures. User jay has the following set folder statement in his $HOME/.mailrc file so that the folder directory where that folder is kept is already selected: set folder=/u/jay/doc To look at the contents of a specific mail folder, enter the following at the command-line prompt: mailx -f +dept In this example, a listing of the messages in the dept folder is displayed. To prevent the Date, From, and To headers from being displayed when a message is read with the type or the print sub- command, enter the following statement in your $HOME/.mailrc file: ignore date from to When a message is displayed using the type or print subcommand, the date, from, and to headers are not displayed. However, if you want to display these headers without deleting the ignore statement from your $HOME/.mailrc file, use the Type, Print, or top subcommands to display the message. To keep a record of messages you send to others, enter the following statement in your $HOME/.mailrc file: set record=letters/mailout To create a distribution list for your department, enter the following statement in your $HOME/.mailrc file: alias dept dee@merlin anne@anchor jerry@zeus bill carl To send a message to your department after you have added this line to your $HOME/.mailrc file, enter the following at the com- mand line prompt: mailx dept The message you now create and send will go to dee on system merlin, anne on system anchor, jerry on system zeus, and to bill and carl on the local system. FILES User mailbox files. Holds saved mail. File containing mailx subcom- mands to customize mailx for a specific user. File containing mailx subcommands to change mailx for all users on the system. SEE ALSO Commands: mail(1), fmt(1), pg(1), sendmail(8) Standards: standards(5) mailx(1)