GNU Mailutils Manual (split by node): Section: Back: 2.4 mail — Send and Receive Mail Forward: 2.4.2 How to Specify Message Sets Chapter: FastBack: 2. Mailutils Programs Up: 2.4 mail — Send and Receive Mail FastForward: 3. Mailutils Libraries Doc: Contents: Table of Contents Index: Function Index   ?

2.4.1 Invoking 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: .

Mail understands following command line options:

‘-e’
‘--exist’

Return true if the mailbox contains some messages. Return false otherwise. This is useful for writing shell scripts.

‘-E command’
‘--exec=command’

Execute command before opening the mailbox. Any number of ‘--exec’ options can be given. The commands will be executed after sourcing configuration files (see section Personal and System-wide Configuration Files), but before opening the mailbox.

‘-f’
‘--file’

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 section Reading Mail, for more details about using this option.

‘-F’
‘--byname’

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).

‘-H’
‘--headers’

Print header summary to stdout and exit.

‘-i’
‘--ignore’

Ignore interrupts.

‘-m path’
‘--mail-spool=path’

Set path to the mailspool directory

‘-n’
‘--norc’

Do not read the system-wide mailrc file. See section Personal and System-wide Configuration Files.

‘-N’
‘--nosum’

Do not display initial header summary.

‘-p’
‘--print’
‘-r’
‘--read’

Print all mail to standard output. It is equivalent to issuing following commands after starting ‘mail -N’:

 
print *
quit
‘-q’
‘--quit’

Cause interrupts to terminate program.

‘-s subj’
‘--subject=subj’

Send a message with a Subject of subj. Valid only in sending mode.

‘-t’
‘--to’

Switch to sending mode.

‘-u user’
‘--user=user’

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).

‘-?’
‘--help’

Display a help message.

‘--usage’

Display a short usage summary.

‘-V’
‘--version’

Print program version and exit.

GNU Mailutils Manual (split by node): Section: Back: 2.4 mail — Send and Receive Mail Forward: 2.4.2 How to Specify Message Sets Chapter: FastBack: 2. Mailutils Programs Up: 2.4 mail — Send and Receive Mail FastForward: 3. Mailutils Libraries Doc: Contents: Table of Contents Index: Function Index   ?
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