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mail
General usage of mail
program is:
mail [option...] [address...]
If [address...] part is present, mail
switches to
mail sending mode, otherwise it operates in mail reading mode.
The program uses following option groups: See mailbox (Editor’s note: dangling link).
Mail
understands following command line options:
Return true if the mailbox contains some messages. Return false otherwise. This is useful for writing shell scripts.
Execute command before opening the mailbox. Any number of --exec options can be given. The commands will be executed after sourcing configuration files (see Mail Configuration Files), but before opening the mailbox.
Operate on the mailbox given by the first non-optional command line argument. If there is no such argument, read messages from the user’s mbox file. See Reading Mail, for more details about using this option.
Record outgoing messages in a file named after the first recipient. The name is the login-name portion of the address found first on the ‘To:’ line in the mail header. This option sets the ‘byname’ variable, which see (see byname).
Print header summary to stdout and exit.
Ignore interrupts.
Set path to the mailspool directory
Do not read the system-wide mailrc file. See Mail Configuration Files.
Do not display initial header summary.
Print all mail to standard output. It is equivalent to issuing following commands after starting ‘mail -N’:
print * quit
Sets the return email address for outgoing mail. See return-address.
Cause interrupts to terminate program.
Send a message with a Subject of subj. Valid only in sending mode.
Switch to sending mode.
Operate on user’s mailbox. This is equivalent to:
mail -f/spool_path/user
with spool_path being the full path to your mailspool directory
(/var/spool/mail or /var/mail on most systems).
Display a help message.
Display a short usage summary.
Print program version and exit.
Next: Specifying Messages, Up: mail [Contents][Index]