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show(1) General Commands Manual show(1) NAME show - show (list) messages (only available within the message handling system, mh) SYNOPSIS show [ +folder ] [ msgs ] [ -draft ] [ -[no]header ] [ -help ] [ -show- proc program ] [ -noshowproc ] [ options to showproc ] DESCRIPTION Use show to display the contents of the current message. You can spec- ify alternative messages or folders by using the +folder or msgs argu- ments. If a folder is given, it becomes the current folder. The last message shown becomes the current message. You can specify a number of messages or a range of messages using the msgs argument. If you specify more than one message, show prompts for a <RETURN> prior to listing each message. Typically, the messages are listed exactly as they are, with no refor- matting. A program named by the showproc component in the .mh_profile file is invoked to do the listing, and any options not recognized by show are passed along to that program. The default program is more(1). By default, the show command use the more program to list each message, a page at a time. When the end of the page is reached, it waits for a <RETURN> or a space. If you press <RETURN>, show prints the next line. If you press the space bar, it prints the next screen of data. At the end of the message, show automatically returns you to the system prompt. Press q to quit before the end of the message. If the profile entry Unseen-Sequence: is present and non-empty, then show will remove each of the messages shown from the sequences named by the profile entry. FLAGS -draft Displays the draft message, or the current message in your +drafts folder, if you have one set up. You cannot give a msgs argument when you use this option. -header -noheader Displays a one-line header before the message. The header consists of the name of the folder and the message number. This is the default behavior. It can be suppressed with the -noheader option. -help Prints a list of the valid options to this command. -showproc program [ options ] -noshowproc Specifies an alternative program to list messages. The de- fault is to use the program defined by the showproc: entry in the .mh_profile file. You can give options to the showproc program at the command line. These are passed directly to showproc by show. If the -noshowproc option is specified, /bin/cat is used in- stead of showproc. The MH command mhl can be used as a showproc to show messages in a more uniform format. See mhl(1) for more details. If you are going to use the same showproc all the time, it is advisable to specify it in your .mh_profile file. See mh_profile(4) for more details. The defaults for this command are as follows: +folder defaults to the current folder msgs defaults to the current message -header RESTRICTIONS The -header option does not work when msgs expands to more than one message. If the showproc is mhl, then this problem can be circumvented by referencing the messagename field in the mhl format file. The command show updates your mail environment before showing the mes- sage. Hence show may mark messages as seen before you actually see them. However, this is generally not a problem, unless you are using the unseen messages mechanism, and you interrupt show while it is show- ing unseen messages. If your showproc is mhl, then show uses a built-in mhl: it does not ac- tually run the mhl program. Hence, if you define your own showproc, do not call it mhl since show will not run it. If more(1) is your showproc (which is the default), then avoid running show in the background with only its standard output piped to another process. You should re-direct the diagnostic output of show as well For example, in the following incorrect example, show will go into a tty input state: % show | print & For users of csh, the correct command is: % show |& print & For users of sh, the correct command is: % show 2>&1 | print & EXAMPLES In the first example, show displays the contents of message 36 in the current folder: % show 36 In the next example, the pr(1) program is used to list the current mes- sage: % show -showproc pr PROFILE COMPONENTS tab(+); l l. Path:+To determine the user's Mail directory Unseen-Se- quence:+To name sequences denoting unseen messages showproc:+Program to show messages FILES $HOME/.mh_profile The user profile. RELATED INFORMATION more(1), mhl(1), next(1), pick(1), prev(1), scan(1) delim off show(1)