GNU Mailutils
	General-Purpose Mail Package	Official GNU Software

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3.5.2 Reading Mail

The mail utility operates on three kinds of mailboxes. The user system mailbox is the mailbox where the incoming mail for the user is stored. Its location is system-dependent and is determined using the common mailutils rules (see mailbox statement). The personal mailbox (or mbox, for short) is the default location for saving messages that have been read. By default it is $HOME/mbox or whatever file specified by the MBOX environment variable. Any other mailboxes are called secondary mailboxes.

When called without arguments, mail opens the system mailbox for the invoking user. The --file (-f) used without arguments instructs mail to operate on the personal mailbox instead. When this option and a single command line argument are used together, mail treats the argument as the pathname of the secondary mailbox to operate upon.

Notice that this argument is not an argument to the --file (-f) option itself, but rather the first non-optional argument on the command line. This means that any number of additional options are allowed between the --file option and the mailbox file name. For example, the following three invocations are equivalent:

$ mail -fin mymbox
$ mail -f mymbox -in
$ mail --file -in mymbox
$ mail --file -i mymbox -n

Additionally, for conformance to the GNU standards, the following form is also accepted:

$ mail --file=mymbox -i -n

The --user (-u) option allows the system administrator to assume another user identity for operating on this user’s mailboxes. Obviously, it is available only to system administrators. For example:

mail --user=tom

reads mail from the system mailbox of the user ‘tom’, and

mail --user=tom --file

reads mail from the personal mailbox of this user.

Unless you have started mail with --norc command line option, it will read the contents of the system-wide configuration file. Then it will read the contents of user configuration file, if it exists. For detailed description of these files, see Mail Configuration Files. After this initial setup, mail displays the first page of header lines (unless the -N option has been given), followed by a prompt, indicating that it is waiting for regular commands. Upon receiving a command, mail parses and executes it, displays the result on the screen, prints the prompt and waits for the next command. This process is continued until mail receives any of the commands ‘quit’, ‘exit’ or the end-of-file character (ASCII 4, or C-D).

Each message in the mailbox has a state that affects how it is retained or deleted upon closing the mailbox when terminating the program (see the quit command) or when switching to another mailbox (see the file command). The state is reflected in the header listing and can be changed during the session. The states are:

new

The message is present in the system mailbox and has not been read by the user or moved to any other state. When mail terminates, messages in this state are retained in the system mailbox. If the mailbox is closed, such messages are moved to the ‘unread’ state.

unread

The message has been present in the system mailbox for more than one invocation of mail and has not been read by the user or moved to any other state. When mail terminates, messages in this state are retained in the system mailbox.

read

The message has been read by the user, i.e. processed by one of the following commands: copy, mbox, next, pipe, prev, print, Print, struct, top, type, Type, undelete, or any of the following escapes (in message compose mode): ~f, ~m, ~F, ~M.

When mail terminates, messages in this state are handled depending on the mailbox they are in.

If mail was operating on the user system mailbox, all messages in state ‘read’ are preserved. The location where they are preserved is determined by the hold variable (see Mail Variables). If it is not set (the default), the messages are moved to the user’s mbox. If hold is set, the messages are held in the system mailbox instead.

The ‘read’ messages in any other mailbox will be retained in their current location.

deleted

The message has been processed by one of the following commands: ‘delete’, ‘dp’, ‘dt’. Messages in this state are ignored by any command, excepting ‘undelete’, which changes their state back to ‘read’. When closing the mailbox, deleted messages are permanently removed from the mailbox.

preserved

The message has been processed by the preserve (hold) command. When closing the mailbox, such messages are retained in the mailbox.

saved

The message has been processed by one of the following commands: save, write. When mail terminates, messages in this state are handled depending on the mailbox they are in.

If mail was operating on the user system mailbox, the default behavior for ‘saved’ messages is to remove them from the system mailbox. If, however, the keepsave variable is set, they are preserved using the same rules as for ‘read’ messages (see above).

Saved messages in non-system mailboxes are retained in their current location.

Unless the mailbox is empty, exactly one of its messages will be marked as current message. Upon startup, current message is set to the first new message, if there is any, or the first unread message if there is any, or to the first message in the mailbox. In the header listing, current message is marked with the ‘>’ sign at the beginning of the line. Current message is changed by any of the following commands: ‘dp’, ‘prev’, ‘next’.