x SuSE Linux 13.1-RELEASE x
x SuSE Linux 13.1-RELEASEx
MAILX(1) User Commands MAILX(1)
NAME
mailx - send and receive Internet mail
SYNOPSIS
mailx [-BDdEFintv~] [-R [address]] [-s subject] [-a attachment ]
[-c cc-addr] [-b bcc-addr] [-r from-addr] [-h hops] [-A account]
[-S variable[=value]] to-addr . . .
mailx [-BDdeEHiInNRv~] [-T name] [-A account] [-S variable[=value]] -f
[name]
mailx [-BDdeEinNRv~] [-A account] [-S variable[=value]] [-u user]
DESCRIPTION
Mailx is an intelligent mail processing system, which has a command
syntax reminiscent of ed(1) with lines replaced by messages. It is
based on Berkeley Mail 8.1, is intended to provide the functionality of
the POSIX mailx command, and offers extensions for MIME, IMAP, POP3,
SMTP, and S/MIME. Mailx provides enhanced features for interactive
use, such as caching and disconnected operation for IMAP, message
threading, scoring, and filtering. It is also usable as a mail batch
language, both for sending and receiving mail.
The following options are accepted:
-A name
Executes an account command (see below) for name after the
startup files have been read.
-a file
Attach the given file to the message.
-B Make standard input and standard output line-buffered.
-b address
Send blind carbon copies to list. List should be a comma-sepa-
rated list of names.
-c address
Send carbon copies to list of users.
-D Start in disconnected mode; see the description for the discon-
nected variable option.
-d Enables debugging messages and disables the actual delivery of
messages. Unlike -v, this option is intended for mailx develop-
ment only.
-e Just check if mail is present in the system mailbox. If yes,
return an exit status of zero, else, a non-zero value.
-E If an outgoing message does not contain any text in its first or
only message part, do not send it but discard it silently, ef-
fectively setting the skipemptybody variable at program startup.
This is useful for sending messages from scripts started by
cron(8).
-f [file]
Read in the contents of the user's mbox (or the specified file)
for processing; when mailx is quit, it writes undeleted messages
back to this file. The string file is handled as described for
the folder command below.
-F Save the message to send in a file named after the local part of
the first recipient's address.
-H Print header summaries for all messages and exit.
-h hops
Invoke sendmail with the specified hop count. This option has
no effect when SMTP is used for sending mail.
-i Ignore tty interrupt signals. This is particularly useful when
using mailx on noisy phone lines.
-I Shows the `Newsgroup:' or `Article-Id:' fields in the header
summary. Only applicable in combination with -f.
-n Inhibits reading /etc/mail.rc upon startup. This option should
be activated for mailx scripts that are invoked on more than one
machine, because the contents of that file may differ between
them.
-N Inhibits the initial display of message headers when reading
mail or editing a mail folder.
-q file
Start the message with the contents of the specified file. May
be given in send mode only.
-r address
Sets the From address. Overrides any from variable specified in
environment or startup files. Tilde escapes are disabled. The
-r address options are passed to the mail transfer agent unless
SMTP is used. This option exists for compatibility only; it is
recommended to set the from variable directly instead.
-R | -R address
Without any argument any folders will be opened read-only. With
argument an reply-to adress is specifed on command line. Only
the first argument after the -R flag is used as the address.
-s subject
Specify subject on command line (only the first argument after
the -s flag is used as a subject; be careful to quote subjects
containing spaces).
-S variable[=value]
Sets the internal option variable and, in case of a string op-
tion, assigns value to it.
-T name
Writes the `Message-Id:' and `Article-Id:' header fields of each
message read in the file name. Implies -I. Compressed files
are handled as described for the folder command below.
-t The message to be sent is expected to contain a message header
with `To:', `Cc:', or `Bcc:' fields giving its recipients. Re-
cipients specified on the command line are ignored.
-u user
Reads the mailbox of the given user name.
-v Verbose mode. The details of delivery are displayed on the
user's terminal.
-V Print mailx's version and exit.
-~ Enable tilde escapes even if not in interactive mode.
Sending mail
To send a message to one or more people, mailx can be invoked with ar-
guments which are the names of people to whom the mail will be sent.
The user is then expected to type in his message, followed by an `con-
trol-D' at the beginning of a line. The section below Replying to or
originating mail, describes some features of mailx available to help
when composing letters.
Reading mail
In normal usage mailx is given no arguments and checks the user's mail
out of the post office, then prints out a one line header of each mes-
sage found. The current message is initially the first message (num-
bered 1) and can be printed using the print command which can be abbre-
viated `p'). The user can move among the messages much as he moves be-
tween lines in ed(1), with the commands `+' and `-' moving backwards
and forwards, and simple numbers.
Disposing of mail
After examining a message the user can delete `d') the message or reply
`r') to it. Deletion causes the mailx program to forget about the mes-
sage. This is not irreversible; the message can be undeleted `u') by
giving its number, or the mailx session can be aborted by giving the
exit `x') command. Deleted messages will, however, usually disappear
never to be seen again.
Specifying messages
Commands such as print and delete can be given a list of message num-
bers as arguments to apply to a number of messages at once. Thus
`delete 1 2' deletes messages 1 and 2, while `delete 1-5' deletes mes-
sages 1 through 5. In sorted or threaded mode (see the sort and thread
commands), `delete 1-5' deletes the messages that are located between
(and including) messages 1 through 5 in the sorted/threaded order, as
shown in the header summary. The following special message names ex-
ist:
:n All new messages.
:o All old messages (any not in state read or new).
:u All unread messages.
:d All deleted messages (for the undelete command).
:r All read messages.
:f All `flagged' messages.
:a All answered messages (cf. the markanswered variable).
:t All messages marked as draft.
:k All `killed' messages.
:j All messages classified as junk.
. The current message.
; The message that was previously the current message.
, The parent message of the current message, that is the message
with the Message-ID given in the `In-Reply-To:' field or the
last entry of the `References:' field of the current message.
- The next previous undeleted message, or the next previous
deleted message for the undelete command. In sorted/threaded
mode, the next previous such message in the sorted/threaded or-
der.
+ The next undeleted message, or the next deleted message for the
undelete command. In sorted/threaded mode, the next such mes-
sage in the sorted/threaded order.
^ The first undeleted message, or the first deleted message for
the undelete command. In sorted/threaded mode, the first such
message in the sorted/threaded order.
$ The last message. In sorted/threaded mode, the last message in
the sorted/threaded order.
&x In threaded mode, selects the message addressed with x, where x
is any other message specification, and all messages from the
thread that begins at it. Otherwise, it is identical to x. If
x is omitted, the thread beginning with the current message is
selected.
* All messages.
` All messages that were included in the message list for the pre-
vious command.
/string
All messages that contain string in the subject field (case ig-
nored). See also the searchheaders variable. If string is
empty, the string from the previous specification of that type
is used again.
address
All messages from address. By default, this is a case-sensitive
search for the complete email address. If the allnet variable
is set, only the local part of the addresses is evaluated for
the comparison. Otherwise if the showname variable is set, a
case-sensitive search for the complete real name of a sender is
performed. The IMAP-style (from address) expression can be used
instead if substring matches are desired.
(criterion)
All messages that satisfy the given IMAP-style SEARCH criterion.
This addressing mode is available with all types of folders; for
folders not located on IMAP servers, or for servers unable to
execute the SEARCH command, mailx will perform the search lo-
cally. Strings must be enclosed by double quotes `"' in their
entirety if they contain white space or parentheses; within the
quotes, only backslash `\' is recognized as an escape character.
All string searches are case-insensitive. When the description
indicates that the `envelope' representation of an address field
is used, this means that the search string is checked against
both a list constructed as
("real name" "source-route" "local-part" "domain-part")
for each address, and the addresses without real names from the
respective header field. Criteria can be nested using parenthe-
ses.
(criterion1 criterion2 ... criterionN)
All messages that satisfy all of the given criteria.
(or criterion1 criterion2)
All messages that satisfy either criterion1 or criterion2, or
both. To connect more than two criteria using `or', (or) speci-
fications have to be nested using additional parentheses, as
with `(or a (or b c))'; `(or a b c)' means ((a or b) and c).
For a simple `or' operation of independent criteria on the low-
est nesting level, it is possible to achieve similar effects by
using three separate criteria, as with `(a) (b) (c)'.
(not criterion)
All messages that do not satisfy criterion.
(bcc string)
All messages that contain string in the `envelope' representa-
tion of the Bcc: field.
(cc string)
All messages that contain string in the `envelope' representa-
tion of the Cc: field.
(from string)
All messages that contain string in the `envelope' representa-
tion of the From: field.
(subject string)
All messages that contain string in the Subject: field.
(to string)
All messages that contain string in the `envelope' representa-
tion of the To: field.
(header name string)
All messages that contain string in the specified Name: field.
(body string)
All messages that contain string in their body.
(text string)
All messages that contain string in their header or body.
(larger size)
All messages that are larger than size (in bytes).
(smaller size)
All messages that are smaller than size (in bytes).
(before date)
All messages that were received before date; date must be in the
form d[d]-mon-yyyy, where d[d] is the day of the month as one or
two digits, mon is the name of the month--one of `Jan', `Feb',
`Mar', `Apr', `May', `Jun', `Jul', `Aug', `Sep', `Oct', `Nov',
or `Dec', and yyyy is the year as four digits; e.g.
"30-Aug-2004".
(on date)
All messages that were received on the specified date.
(since date)
All messages that were received since the specified date.
(sentbefore date)
All messages that were sent on the specified date.
(senton date)
All messages that were sent on the specified date.
(sentsince date)
All messages that were sent since the specified date.
() The same criterion as for the previous search. This specifica-
tion cannot be used as part of another criterion. If the previ-
ous command line contained more than one independent criterion,
the last of those criteria is used.
A practical method to read a set of messages is to issue a from command
with the search criteria first to check for appropriate messages, and
to read each single message then by typing ``' repeatedly.
Replying to or originating mail
The reply command can be used to set up a response to a message, send-
ing it back to the person who it was from. Text the user types in
then, up to an end-of-file, defines the contents of the message. While
the user is composing a message, mailx treats lines beginning with the
character `~' specially. For instance, typing `~m' (alone on a line)
will place a copy of the current message into the response right shift-
ing it by a tabstop (see indentprefix variable, below). Other escapes
will set up subject fields, add and delete recipients to the message,
attach files to it and allow the user to escape to an editor to revise
the message or to a shell to run some commands. (These options are
given in the summary below.)
Ending a mail processing session
The user can end a mailx session with the quit (`q') command. Messages
which have been examined go to the user's mbox file unless they have
been deleted in which case they are discarded. Unexamined messages go
back to the post office. (See the -f option above).
Personal and systemwide distribution lists
It is also possible to create a personal distribution lists so that,
for instance, the user can send mail to `cohorts' and have it go to a
group of people. Such lists can be defined by placing a line like
alias cohorts bill ozalp jkf mark kridle@ucbcory
in the file .mailrc in the user's home directory. The current list of
such aliases can be displayed with the alias command in mailx. System
wide distribution lists can be created by editing /etc/aliases, see
aliases(5) and sendmail(8); these are kept in a different syntax. In
mail the user sends, personal aliases will be expanded in mail sent to
others so that they will be able to reply to the recipients. System
wide aliases are not expanded when the mail is sent, but any reply re-
turned to the machine will have the system wide alias expanded as all
mail goes through sendmail.
Recipient address specifications
If the expandaddr option is not set (the default), recipient addresses
must be names of local mailboxes or Internet mail addresses.
If the expandaddr option is set, the following rules apply: When an ad-
dress is used to name a recipient (in any of To, Cc, or Bcc), names of
local mail folders and pipes to external commands can also be speci-
fied; the message text is then written to them. The rules are: Any
name which starts with a `|' character specifies a pipe, the command
string following the `|' is executed and the message is sent to its
standard input; any other name which contains a `@' character is
treated as a mail address; any other name which starts with a `+' char-
acter specifies a folder name; any other name which contains a `/'
character but no `!' or `%' character before also specifies a folder
name; what remains is treated as a mail address. Compressed folders
are handled as described for the folder command below.
Network mail (Internet / ARPA, UUCP, Berknet)
See mailaddr(7) for a description of network addresses. Mailx has a
number of options which can be set in the .mailrc file to alter its be-
havior; thus `set askcc' enables the askcc feature. (These options are
summarized below).
MIME types
For any outgoing attachment, mailx tries to determine the content type.
It does this by reading MIME type files whose lines have the following
syntax:
type/subtype extension [extension . . .]
where type/subtype are strings describing the file contents, and exten-
sion is the part of a filename starting after the last dot. Any line
not immediately beginning with an ASCII alphabetical character is ig-
nored by mailx. If there is a match with the extension of the file to
attach, the given type/subtype pair is used. Otherwise, or if the
filename has no extension, the content types text/plain or applica-
tion/octet-stream are used, the first for text or international text
files, the second for any file that contains formatting characters
other than newlines and horizontal tabulators.
Character sets
Mailx normally detects the character set of the terminal using the
LC_CTYPE locale setting. If the locale cannot be used appropriately,
the ttycharset variable should be set to provide an explicit value.
When reading messages, their text is converted to the terminal charac-
ter set if possible. Unprintable characters and illegal byte sequences
are detected and replaced by Unicode substitute characters or question
marks unless the print-all-chars is set at initialization time.
The character set for outgoing messages is not necessarily the same as
the one used on the terminal. If an outgoing text message contains
characters not representable in US-ASCII, the character set being used
must be declared within its header. Permissible values can be declared
using the sendcharsets variable, separated by commas; mailx tries each
of the values in order and uses the first appropriate one. If the mes-
sage contains characters that cannot be represented in any of the given
character sets, the message will not be sent, and its text will be
saved to the `dead.letter' file. Messages that contain NUL bytes are
not converted.
Outgoing attachments are converted if they are plain text. If the
sendcharsets variable contains more than one character set name, the ~@
tilde escape will ask for the character sets for individual attachments
if it is invoked without arguments.
Best results are usually achieved when mailx is run in a UTF-8 locale
on a UTF-8 capable terminal. In this setup, characters from various
countries can be displayed, while it is still possible to use more sim-
ple character sets for sending to retain maximum compatibility with
older mail clients.
Commands
Each command is typed on a line by itself, and may take arguments fol-
lowing the command word. The command need not be typed in its entirety
- the first command which matches the typed prefix is used. For com-
mands which take message lists as arguments, if no message list is
given, then the next message forward which satisfies the command's re-
quirements is used. If there are no messages forward of the current
message, the search proceeds backwards, and if there are no good mes-
sages at all, mailx types `applicable messages' and aborts the command.
If the command begins with a # sign, the line is ignored.
The arguments to commands can be quoted, using the following methods:
o An argument can be enclosed between paired double-quotes "" or
single-quotes ''; any white space, shell word expansion, or
backslash characters within the quotes are treated literally as
part of the argument. A double-quote will be treated literally
within single-quotes and vice versa. These special properties of
the quote marks occur only when they are paired at the beginning
and end of the argument.
o A backslash outside of the enclosing quotes is discarded and the
following character is treated literally as part of the argu-
ment.
o An unquoted backslash at the end of a command line is discarded
and the next line continues the command.
Filenames, where expected, are subjected to the following transforma-
tions, in sequence:
o If the filename begins with an unquoted plus sign, and the
folder variable is defined, the plus sign will be replaced by
the value of the folder variable followed by a slash. If the
folder variable is unset or is set to null, the filename will be
unchanged.
o Shell word expansions are applied to the filename. If more than
a single pathname results from this expansion and the command is
expecting one file, an error results.
The following commands are provided:
- Print out the preceding message. If given a numeric argument n,
goes to the n'th previous message and prints it.
? Prints a brief summary of commands.
! Executes the shell (see sh(1) and csh(1)) command which follows.
| A synonym for the pipe command.
account
(ac) Creates, selects or lists an email account. An account is
formed by a group of commands, primarily of those to set vari-
ables. With two arguments, of which the second is a `{', the
first argument gives an account name, and the following lines
create a group of commands for that account until a line con-
taining a single `}' appears. With one argument, the previously
created group of commands for the account name is executed, and
a folder command is executed for the system mailbox or inbox of
that account. Without arguments, the list of accounts and their
contents are printed. As an example,
account myisp {
set folder=imaps://mylogin@imap.myisp.example
set record=+Sent
set from="myname@myisp.example (My Name)"
set smtp=smtp.myisp.example
}
creates an account named `myisp' which can later be selected by
specifying `account myisp'.
alias (a) With no arguments, prints out all currently-defined aliases.
With one argument, prints out that alias. With more than one
argument, creates a new alias or changes an old one.
alternates
(alt) The alternates command is useful if the user has accounts
on several machines. It can be used to inform mailx that the
listed addresses all belong to the invoking user. When he
replies to messages, mailx will not send a copy of the message
to any of the addresses listed on the alternates list. If the
alternates command is given with no argument, the current set of
alternate names is displayed.
answered
(ans) Takes a message list and marks each message as a having
been answered. This mark has no technical meaning in the mail
system; it just causes messages to be marked in the header sum-
mary, and makes them specially addressable.
cache Only applicable to cached IMAP mailboxes; takes a message list
and reads the specified messages into the IMAP cache.
call Calls a macro (see the define command).
cd Same as chdir.
certsave
Only applicable to S/MIME signed messages. Takes a message list
and a file name and saves the certificates contained within the
message signatures to the named file in both human-readable and
PEM format. The certificates can later be used to send en-
crypted messages to the messages' originators by setting the
smime-encrypt-user@host variable.
chdir (ch) Changes the user's working directory to that specified, if
given. If no directory is given, then changes to the user's lo-
gin directory.
classify
(cl) Takes a list of messages and examines their contents for
characteristics of junk mail using Bayesian filtering. Messages
considered to be junk are then marked as such. The junk mail
database is not changed.
collapse
(coll) Only applicable to threaded mode. Takes a message list
and makes all replies to these messages invisible in header sum-
maries, unless they are in state `new'.
connect
(conn) If operating in disconnected mode on an IMAP mailbox,
switch to online mode and connect to the mail server while re-
taining the mailbox status. See the description of the discon-
nected variable for more information.
copy (c) The copy command does the same thing that save does, except
that it does not mark the messages it is used on for deletion
when the user quits. Compressed files and IMAP mailboxes are
handled as described for the folder command.
Copy (C) Similar to copy, but saves the messages in a file named af-
ter the local part of the sender address of the first message.
decrypt
(dec) For unencrypted messages, this command is identical to
copy. Encrypted messages are first decrypted, if possible, and
then copied.
Decrypt
(Dec) Similar to decrypt, but saves the messages in a file named
after the local part of the sender address of the first message.
define (def) Defines a macro. A macro definition is a sequence of com-
mands in the following form:
define name {
command1
command2
...
commandN
}
Once defined, a macro can be explicitly invoked using the call
command, or can be implicitly invoked by setting the folder-hook
or folder-hook-fullname variables.
defines
Prints the currently defined macros including their contents.
delete (d) Takes a list of messages as argument and marks them all as
deleted. Deleted messages will not be saved in mbox, nor will
they be available for most other commands.
discard
Same as ignore.
disconnect
(disco) If operating in online mode on an IMAP mailbox, switch
to disconnected mode while retaining the mailbox status. See
the description of the disconnected variable for more informa-
tion. A list of messages may optionally be given as argument;
the respective messages are then read into the cache before the
connection is closed. Thus `disco *' makes the entire current
mailbox available for disconnected use.
dp or dt
Deletes the current message and prints the next message. If
there is no next message, mailx says `at EOF'.
draft Takes a message list and marks each message as a draft. This
mark has no technical meaning in the mail system; it just causes
messages to be marked in the header summary, and makes them spe-
cially addressable.
echo Echoes its arguments, resolving special names as documented for
the folder command. The escape sequences `\a', `\b', `\c',
`\f', `\n', `\r', `\t', `\v', `\\', and `\0num' are interpreted
as with the echo(1) command.
edit (e) Takes a list of messages and points the text editor at each
one in turn. Modified contents are discarded unless the write-
backedited variable is set.
else Marks the end of the then-part of an if statement and the begin-
ning of the part to take effect if the condition of the if
statement is false.
endif Marks the end of an if statement.
exit (ex or x) Effects an immediate return to the Shell without modi-
fying the user's system mailbox, his mbox file, or his edit file
in -f.
file (fi) The same as folder.
flag (fl) Takes a message list and marks the messages as `flagged'
for urgent/special attention. This mark has no technical mean-
ing in the mail system; it just causes messages to be high-
lighted in the header summary, and makes them specially address-
able.
folders
With no arguments, list the names of the folders in the folder
directory. With an existing folder as an argument, lists then
names of folders below the named folder; e.g. the command `fold-
ers @' lists the folders on the base level of the current IMAP
server. See also the imap-list-depth variable.
folder (fold) The folder command switches to a new mail file or folder.
With no arguments, it tells the user which file he is currently
reading. If an argument is given, it will write out changes
(such as deletions) the user has made in the current file and
read in the new file. Some special conventions are recognized
for the name. # means the previous file, % means the invoking
user's system mailbox, %user means user's system mailbox, &
means the invoking user's mbox file, and +file means a file in
the folder directory. %:filespec expands to the same value as
filespec, but the file is handled as a system mailbox e. g. by
the mbox and save commands. If the name matches one of the
strings defined with the shortcut command, it is replaced by its
long form and expanded. If the name ends with .gz or .bz2, it
is treated as compressed with gzip(1) or bzip2(1), respectively.
Likewise, if name does not exist, but either name.gz or name.bz2
exists, the compressed file is used. If name refers to a direc-
tory with the subdirectories `tmp', `new', and `cur', it is
treated as a folder in maildir format. A name of the form
protocol://[user@]host[:port][/file]
is taken as an Internet mailbox specification. The supported
protocols are currently imap (IMAP v4r1), imaps (IMAP with
SSL/TLS encryption), pop3 (POP3), and pop3s (POP3 with SSL/TLS
encryption). If user contains special characters, in particular
`/' or `%', they must be escaped in URL notation, as `%2F' or
`%25'. The optional file part applies to IMAP only; if it is
omitted, the default `INBOX' is used. If mailx is connected to
an IMAP server, a name of the form @mailbox refers to the mail-
box on that server. If the `folder' variable refers to an IMAP
account, the special name `%' selects the `INBOX' on that ac-
count.
Followup
(F) Similar to Respond, but saves the message in a file named
after the local part of the first recipient's address.
followup
(fo) Similar to respond, but saves the message in a file named
after the local part of the first recipient's address.
followupall
Similar to followup, but responds to all recipients regardless
of the flipr and Replyall variables.
followupsender
Similar to Followup, but responds to the sender only regardless
of the flipr and Replyall variables.
forward
(fwd) Takes a message and the address of a recipient and for-
wards the message to him. The text of the original message is
included in the new one, with the value of the fwdheading vari-
able printed before. The fwdignore and fwdretain commands spec-
ify which header fields are included in the new message. Only
the first part of a multipart message is included unless the
forward-as-attachment option is set.
Forward
(Fwd) Similar to forward, but saves the message in a file named
after the local part of the recipient's address.
from (f) Takes a list of messages and prints their message headers,
piped through the pager if the output does not fit on the
screen.
fwdignore
Specifies which header fields are to be ignored with the forward
command. This command has no effect when the forward-as-attach-
ment option is set.
fwdretain
Specifies which header fields are to be retained with the for-
ward command. fwdretain overrides fwdignore. This command has
no effect when the forward-as-attachment option is set.
good (go) Takes a list of messages and marks all of them as not being
junk mail. Data from these messages is then inserted into the
junk mail database for future classification.
headers
(h) Lists the current range of headers, which is an 18-message
group. If a `+' argument is given, then the next 18-message
group is printed, and if a `-' argument is given, the previous
18-message group is printed.
help A synonym for ?.
hold (ho, also preserve) Takes a message list and marks each message
therein to be saved in the user's system mailbox instead of in
mbox. Does not override the delete command. mailx deviates
from the POSIX standard with this command, as a `next' command
issued after `hold' will display the following message, not the
current one.
if Commands in mailx's startup files can be executed conditionally
depending on whether the user is sending or receiving mail with
the if command. For example:
if receive
commands . . .
endif
An else form is also available:
if receive
commands . . .
else
commands . . .
endif
Note that the only allowed conditions are receive, send, and
term (execute command if standard input is a tty).
ignore Add the list of header fields named to the ignored list. Header
fields in the ignore list are not printed on the terminal when a
message is printed. This command is very handy for suppression
of certain machine-generated header fields. The Type and Print
commands can be used to print a message in its entirety, includ-
ing ignored fields. If ignore is executed with no arguments, it
lists the current set of ignored fields.
imap Sends command strings directly to the current IMAP server.
Mailx operates always in IMAP selected state on the current
mailbox; commands that change this will produce undesirable re-
sults and should be avoided. Useful IMAP commands are:
create Takes the name of an IMAP mailbox as an argument and cre-
ates it.
getquotaroot
Takes the name of an IMAP mailbox as an argument and
prints the quotas that apply to the mailbox. Not all
IMAP servers support this command.
namespace
Takes no arguments and prints the Personal Namespaces,
the Other User's Namespaces, and the Shared Namespaces.
Each namespace type is printed in parentheses; if there
are multiple namespaces of the same type, inner parenthe-
ses separate them. For each namespace, a namespace pre-
fix and a hierarchy separator is listed. Not all IMAP
servers support this command.
inc Same as newmail.
junk (j) Takes a list of messages and marks all of them as junk mail.
Data from these messages is then inserted into the junk mail
database for future classification.
kill (k) Takes a list of messages and `kills' them. Killed messages
are not printed in header summaries, and are ignored by the next
command. The kill command also sets the score of the messages
to negative infinity, so that subsequent score commands will not
unkill them again. Killing is only effective for the current
session on a folder; when it is quit, all messages are automati-
cally unkilled.
list Prints the names of all available commands.
Mail (M) Similar to mail, but saves the message in a file named after
the local part of the first recipient's address.
mail (m) Takes as argument login names and distribution group names
and sends mail to those people.
mbox Indicate that a list of messages be sent to mbox in the user's
home directory when mailx is quit. This is the default action
for messages if unless the hold option is set. mailx deviates
from the POSIX standard with this command, as a `next' command
issued after `mbox' will display the following message, not the
current one.
move (mv) Acts like copy, but marks the messages for deletion if they
were transferred successfully.
Move (Mv) Similar to move, but moves the messages to a file named af-
ter the local part of the sender address of the first message.
newmail
Checks for new mail in the current folder without committing any
changes before. If new mail is present, a message is printed.
If the header variable is set, the headers of each new message
are also printed.
next (n) like + or CR) Goes to the next message in sequence and types
it. With an argument list, types the next matching message.
New Same as unread.
new Same as unread.
online Same as connect.
noop If the current folder is located on an IMAP or POP3 server, a
NOOP command is sent. Otherwise, no operation is performed.
Pipe (Pi) Like pipe but also pipes ignored header fields and all
parts of MIME multipart/alternative messages.
pipe (pi) Takes a message list and a shell command and pipes the mes-
sages through the command. Without an argument, the current
message is piped through the command given by the cmd variable.
If the page variable is set, every message is followed by a
formfeed character.
preserve
(pre) A synonym for hold.
Print (P) Like print but also prints out ignored header fields and all
parts of MIME multipart/alternative messages. See also print,
ignore, and retain.
print (p) Takes a message list and types out each message on the
user's terminal. If the message is a MIME multipart message,
all parts with a content type of `text' or `message' are shown,
the other are hidden except for their headers. Messages are de-
crypted and converted to the terminal character set if neces-
sary.
probability
(prob) For each word given as argument, the contents of its junk
mail database entry are printed.
quit (q) Terminates the session, saving all undeleted, unsaved mes-
sages in the user's mbox file in his login directory, preserving
all messages marked with hold or preserve or never referenced in
his system mailbox, and removing all other messages from his
system mailbox. If new mail has arrived during the session, the
message `You have new mail' is given. If given while editing a
mailbox file with the -f flag, then the edit file is rewritten.
A return to the Shell is effected, unless the rewrite of edit
file fails, in which case the user can escape with the exit com-
mand.
redirect
(red) Same as resend.
Redirect
(Red) Same as Resend.
remove (rem) Removes the named folders. The user is asked for confir-
mation in interactive mode.
rename (ren) Takes the name of an existing folder and the name for the
new folder and renames the first to the second one. Both fold-
ers must be of the same type and must be located on the current
server for IMAP.
Reply (R) Reply to originator. Does not reply to other recipients of
the original message.
reply (r) Takes a message list and sends mail to the sender and all
recipients of the specified message. The default message must
not be deleted.
replyall
Similar to reply, but responds to all recipients regardless of
the flipr and Replyall variables.
replysender
Similar to Reply, but responds to the sender only regardless of
the flipr and Replyall variables.
Resend Like resend, but does not add any header lines. This is not a
way to hide the sender's identity, but useful for sending a mes-
sage again to the same recipients.
resend Takes a list of messages and a user name and sends each message
to the named user. `Resent-From:' and related header fields are
prepended to the new copy of the message.
Respond
Same as Reply.
respond
Same as reply.
respondall
Same as replyall.
respondsender
Same as replysender.
retain Add the list of header fields named to the retained list. Only
the header fields in the retain list are shown on the terminal
when a message is printed. All other header fields are sup-
pressed. The Type and Print commands can be used to print a
message in its entirety. If retain is executed with no argu-
ments, it lists the current set of retained fields.
Save (S) Similar to save, but saves the messages in a file named af-
ter the local part of the sender of the first message instead of
taking a filename argument.
save (s) Takes a message list and a filename and appends each message
in turn to the end of the file. If no filename is given, the
mbox file is used. The filename in quotes, followed by the line
count and character count is echoed on the user's terminal. If
editing a system mailbox, the messages are marked for deletion.
Compressed files and IMAP mailboxes are handled as described for
the -f command line option above.
savediscard
Same as saveignore.
saveignore
Saveignore is to save what ignore is to print and type. Header
fields thus marked are filtered out when saving a message by
save or when automatically saving to mbox. This command should
only be applied to header fields that do not contain information
needed to decode the message, as MIME content fields do. If
saving messages on an IMAP account, ignoring fields makes it im-
possible to copy the data directly on the server, thus operation
usually becomes much slower.
saveretain
Saveretain is to save what retain is to print and type. Header
fields thus marked are the only ones saved with a message when
saving by save or when automatically saving to mbox. Saveretain
overrides saveignore. The use of this command is strongly dis-
couraged since it may strip header fields that are needed to de-
code the message correctly.
score (sc) Takes a message list and a floating point number and adds
the number to the score of each given message. All messages
start at score 0 when a folder is opened. When the score of a
message becomes negative, it is `killed' with the effects de-
scribed for the kill command; otherwise if it was negative be-
fore and becomes positive, it is `unkilled'. Scores only refer
to the currently opened instance of a folder.
set (se) With no arguments, prints all variable values, piped
through the pager if the output does not fit on the screen.
Otherwise, sets option. Arguments are of the form option=value
(no space before or after =) or option. Quotation marks may be
placed around any part of the assignment statement to quote
blanks or tabs, i.e. `set indentprefix="->"'. If an argument
begins with no, as in `set nosave', the effect is the same as
invoking the unset command with the remaining part of the vari-
able (`unset save').
seen Takes a message list and marks all messages as having been read.
shell (sh) Invokes an interactive version of the shell.
shortcut
Defines a shortcut name and its string for expansion, as de-
scribed for the folder command. With no arguments, a list of
defined shortcuts is printed.
show (Sh) Like print, but performs neither MIME decoding nor decryp-
tion so that the raw message text is shown.
size Takes a message list and prints out the size in characters of
each message.
sort Create a sorted representation of the current folder, and change
the next command and the addressing modes such that they refer
to messages in the sorted order. Message numbers are the same
as in regular mode. If the header variable is set, a header
summary in the new order is also printed. Possible sorting cri-
teria are:
date Sort the messages by their `Date:' field, that is by the
time they were sent.
from Sort messages by the value of their `From:' field, that
is by the address of the sender. If the showname vari-
able is set, the sender's real name (if any) is used.
size Sort the messages by their size.
score Sort the messages by their score.
status Sort the messages by their message status (new, read,
old, etc.).
subject
Sort the messages by their subject.
thread Create a threaded order, as with the thread command.
to Sort messages by the value of their `To:' field, that is
by the address of the recipient. If the showname vari-
able is set, the recipient's real name (if any) is used.
If no argument is given, the current sorting criterion is
printed.
source The source command reads commands from a file.
thread (th) Create a threaded representation of the current folder,
i.e. indent messages that are replies to other messages in the
header display, and change the next command and the addressing
modes such that they refer to messages in the threaded order.
Message numbers are the same as in unthreaded mode. If the
header variable is set, a header summary in threaded order is
also printed.
top Takes a message list and prints the top few lines of each. The
number of lines printed is controlled by the variable toplines
and defaults to five.
touch Takes a message list and marks the messages for saving in the
mbox file. mailx deviates from the POSIX standard with this
command, as a `next' command issued after `mbox' will display
the following message, not the current one.
Type (T) Identical to the Print command.
type (t) A synonym for print.
unalias
Takes a list of names defined by alias commands and discards the
remembered groups of users. The group names no longer have any
significance.
unanswered
Takes a message list and marks each message as not having been
answered.
uncollapse
(unc) Only applicable to threaded mode. Takes a message list
and makes the message and all replies to it visible in header
summaries again. When a message becomes the current message, it
is automatically made visible. Also when a message with col-
lapsed replies is printed, all of these are automatically uncol-
lapsed.
undef Undefines each of the named macros. It is not an error to use a
name that does not belong to one of the currently defined
macros.
undelete
(u) Takes a message list and marks each message as not being
deleted.
undraft
Takes a message list and marks each message as a draft.
unflag Takes a message list and marks each message as not being
`flagged'.
unfwdignore
Removes the header field names from the list of ignored fields
for the forward command.
unfwdretain
Removes the header field names from the list of retained fields
for the forward command.
ungood Takes a message list and undoes the effect of a good command
that was previously applied on exactly these messages.
unignore
Removes the header field names from the list of ignored fields.
unjunk Takes a message list and undoes the effect of a junk command
that was previously applied on exactly these messages.
unkill Takes a message list and `unkills' each message. Also sets the
score of the messages to 0.
Unread Same as unread.
unread (U) Takes a message list and marks each message as not having
been read.
unretain
Removes the header field names from the list of retained fields.
unsaveignore
Removes the header field names from the list of ignored fields
for saving.
unsaveretain
Removes the header field names from the list of retained fields
for saving.
unset Takes a list of option names and discards their remembered val-
ues; the inverse of set.
unshortcut
Deletes the shortcut names given as arguments.
unsort Disable sorted or threaded mode (see the sort and thread com-
mands), return to normal message order and, if the header vari-
able is set, print a header summary.
unthread
(unth) Same as unsort.
verify (verif) Takes a message list and verifies each message. If a
message is not an S/MIME signed message, verification will fail
for it. The verification process checks if the message was
signed using a valid certificate, if the message sender's email
address matches one of those contained within the certificate,
and if the message content has been altered.
visual (v) Takes a message list and invokes the display editor on each
message. Modified contents are discarded unless the write-
backedited variable is set.
write (w) For conventional messages, the body without all headers is
written. The output is decrypted and converted to its native
format, if necessary. If the output file exists, the text is
appended.--If a message is in MIME multipart format, its first
part is written to the specified file as for conventional mes-
sages, and the user is asked for a filename to save each other
part; if the contents of the first part are not to be saved,
`write /dev/null' can be used. For the second and subsequent
parts, if the filename given starts with a `|' character, the
part is piped through the remainder of the filename interpreted
as a shell command. In non-interactive mode, only the parts of
the multipart message that have a filename given in the part
header are written, the other are discarded. The original mes-
sage is never marked for deletion in the originating mail
folder. For attachments, the contents of the destination file
are overwritten if the file previously existed. No special han-
dling of compressed files is performed.
xit (x) A synonym for exit.
z Mailx presents message headers in windowfuls as described under
the headers command. The z command scrolls to the next window
of messages. If an argument is given, it specifies the window
to use. A number prefixed by `+' or `-' indicates that the win-
dow is calculated in relation to the current position. A number
without a prefix specifies an absolute window number, and a `$'
lets mailx scroll to the last window of messages.
Z Similar to z, but scrolls to the next or previous window that
contains at least one new or `flagged' message.
Tilde escapes
Here is a summary of the tilde escapes, which are used when composing
messages to perform special functions. Tilde escapes are only recog-
nized at the beginning of lines. The name `tilde escape' is somewhat
of a misnomer since the actual escape character can be set by the op-
tion escape.
~!command
Execute the indicated shell command, then return to the message.
~. Same effect as typing the end-of-file character.
~<filename
Identical to ~r.
~<!command
Command is executed using the shell. Its standard output is in-
serted into the message.
~@ [filename . . . ]
With no arguments, edit the attachment list. First, the user
can edit all existing attachment data. If an attachment's file
name is left empty, that attachment is deleted from the list.
When the end of the attachment list is reached, mailx will ask
for further attachments, until an empty file name is given. If
filename arguments are specified, all of them are appended to
the end of the attachment list. Filenames which contain white
space can only be specified with the first method (no filename
arguments).
~A Inserts the string contained in the Sign variable (same as `~i
Sign'). The escape sequences `\t' (tabulator) and `\n' (new-
line) are understood.
~a Inserts the string contained in the sign variable (same as `~i
sign'). The escape sequences `\t' (tabulator) and `\n' (new-
line) are understood.
~bname . . .
Add the given names to the list of carbon copy recipients but do
not make the names visible in the Cc: line (`blind' carbon
copy).
~cname . . .
Add the given names to the list of carbon copy recipients.
~d Read the file `dead.letter' from the user's home directory into
the message.
~e Invoke the text editor on the message collected so far. After
the editing session is finished, the user may continue appending
text to the message.
~fmessages
Read the named messages into the message being sent. If no mes-
sages are specified, read in the current message. Message head-
ers currently being ignored (by the ignore or retain command)
are not included. For MIME multipart messages, only the first
printable part is included.
~Fmessages
Identical to ~f, except all message headers and all MIME parts
are included.
~h Edit the message header fields `To:', `Cc:', `Bcc:', and `Sub-
ject:' by typing each one in turn and allowing the user to ap-
pend text to the end or modify the field by using the current
terminal erase and kill characters.
~H Edit the message header fields `From:', `Reply-To:', `Sender:',
and `Organization:' in the same manner as described for ~h. The
default values for these fields originate from the from, re-
plyto, and ORGANIZATION variables. If this tilde command has
been used, changing the variables has no effect on the current
message anymore.
~ivariable
Insert the value of the specified variable into the message
adding a newline character at the end. If the variable is unset
or empty, the message remains unaltered. The escape sequences
`\t' (tabulator) and `\n' (newline) are understood.
~mmessages
Read the named messages into the message being sent, indented by
a tab or by the value of indentprefix. If no messages are spec-
ified, read the current message. Message headers currently be-
ing ignored (by the ignore or retain command) are not included.
For MIME multipart messages, only the first printable part is
included.
~Mmessages
Identical to ~m, except all message headers and all MIME parts
are included.
~p Print out the message collected so far, prefaced by the message
header fields and followed by the attachment list, if any. If
the message text is longer than the screen size, it is piped
through the pager.
~q Abort the message being sent, copying the message to `dead.let-
ter' in the user's home directory if save is set.
~Rstring
Use string as the Reply-To field.
~rfilename
Read the named file into the message.
~sstring
Cause the named string to become the current subject field.
~tname . . .
Add the given names to the direct recipient list.
~v Invoke an alternate editor (defined by the VISUAL option) on the
message collected so far. Usually, the alternate editor will be
a screen editor. After the editor is quit, the user may resume
appending text to the end of the message.
~wfilename
Write the message onto the named file. If the file exists, the
message is appended to it.
~x Same as ~q, except that the message is not saved to the
`dead.letter' file.
~|command
Pipe the message through the command as a filter. If the com-
mand gives no output or terminates abnormally, retain the origi-
nal text of the message. The command fmt(1) is often used as
command to rejustify the message.
~:mailx-command
Execute the given mailx command. Not all commands, however, are
allowed.
~_mailx-command
Identical to ~:.
~~string
Insert the string of text in the message prefaced by a single ~.
If the escape character has been changed, that character must be
doubled in order to send it at the beginning of a line.
Variable options
Options are controlled via set and unset commands, see their entries
for a syntax description. An option is also set if it is passed to
mailx as part of the environment (this is not restricted to specific
variables as in the POSIX standard). A value given in a startup file
overrides a value imported from the environment. Options may be either
binary, in which case it is only significant to see whether they are
set or not; or string, in which case the actual value is of interest.
Binary options
The binary options include the following:
allnet Causes only the local part to be evaluated when comparing ad-
dresses.
append Causes messages saved in mbox to be appended to the end rather
than prepended. This should always be set.
ask or asksub
Causes mailx to prompt for the subject of each message sent. If
the user responds with simply a newline, no subject field will
be sent.
askatend
Causes the prompts for `Cc:' and `Bcc:' lists to appear after
the message has been edited.
askattach
If set, mailx asks for files to attach at the end of each mes-
sage. Responding with a newline indicates not to include an at-
tachment.
askcc Causes the user to be prompted for additional carbon copy recip-
ients (at the end of each message if askatend or bsdcompat is
set). Responding with a newline indicates the user's satisfac-
tion with the current list.
askbcc Causes the user to be prompted for additional blind carbon copy
recipients (at the end of each message if askatend or bsdcompat
is set). Responding with a newline indicates the user's satis-
faction with the current list.
asksign
Causes the user to be prompted if the message is to be signed at
the end of each message. The smime-sign variable is ignored
when this variable is set.
autocollapse
Causes threads to be collapsed automatically when threaded mode
is entered (see the collapse command).
autoinc
Same as newmail.
autoprint
Causes the delete command to behave like dp - thus, after delet-
ing a message, the next one will be typed automatically.
autothread
Causes threaded mode (see the thread command) to be entered au-
tomatically when a folder is opened.
bang Enables the substitution of `!' by the contents of the last
command line in shell escapes.
bsdannounce
Causes automatic display of a header summary after executing a
folder command.
bsdcompat
Sets some cosmetical features to traditional BSD style; has the
same affect as setting `askatend' and all other variables pre-
fixed with `bsd', setting prompt to `& ', and changing the de-
fault pager to more.
bsdflags
Changes the letters printed in the first column of a header sum-
mary to traditional BSD style.
bsdheadline
Changes the display of columns in a header summary to tradi-
tional BSD style.
bsdmsgs
Changes some informational messages to traditional BSD style.
bsdorder
Causes the `Subject:' field to appear immediately after the
`To:' field in message headers and with the ~h tilde command.
bsdset Changes the output format of the set command to traditional BSD
style.
chained-junk-tokens
Normally, the Bayesian junk mail filter bases its classifica-
tions on single word tokens extracted from messages. If this
option is set, adjacent words are combined to pairs, which are
then used as additional tokens. This usually improves the accu-
racy of the filter, but also increases the junk mail database
five- to tenfold.
datefield
The date in a header summary is normally the date of the mailbox
`From ' line of the message. If this variable is set, the date
as given in the `Date:' header field is used, converted to local
time.
debug Prints debugging messages and disables the actual delivery of
messages. Unlike verbose, this option is intended for mailx de-
velopment only.
disconnected
When an IMAP mailbox is selected and this variable is set, no
connection to the server is initiated. Instead, data is ob-
tained from the local cache (see imap-cache). Mailboxes that
are not present in the cache and messages that have not yet en-
tirely been fetched from the server are not available; to fetch
all messages in a mailbox at once, the command `copy *
/dev/null' can be used while still in online mode. Changes that
are made to IMAP mailboxes in disconnected mode are queued and
committed later when a connection to that server is opened in
online mode. This procedure is not completely reliable since it
cannot be guaranteed that the IMAP unique identifiers (UIDs) on
the server still match the ones in the cache at that time. Data
is saved to `dead.letter' when this problem occurs.
disconnected-user@host
The specified account is handled as described for the discon-
nected variable above, but other accounts are not affected.
dot The binary option dot causes mailx to interpret a period alone
on a line as the terminator of a message the user is sending.
editheaders
When a message is edited while being composed, its header is in-
cluded in the editable text. `To:', `Cc:', `Bcc:', `Subject:',
`From:', `Reply-To:', `Sender:', and 'Organization:' fields are
accepted within the header, other fields are ignored.
emptybox
If set, an empty mailbox file is not removed. This may improve
the interoperability with other mail user agents when using a
common folder directory.
emptystart
If the mailbox is empty, mailx normally prints `No mail for
user' and exits immediately. If this option is set, mailx
starts even with an empty mailbox.
expandaddr
Causes mailx to expand message recipient addresses, as explained
in the section, Recipient address specifications.
flipr Exchanges the Respond with the respond commands and vice-versa.
forward-as-attachment
Original messages are normally sent as inline text with the for-
ward command, and only the first part of a multipart message is
included. With this option, messages are sent as MIME mes-
sage/rfc822 attachments, and all of their parts are included.
The fwdignore and fwdretain options are ignored when the for-
ward-as-attachment option is set.
fullnames
When replying to a message, mailx normally removes the comment
parts of email addresses, which by convention contain the full
names of the recipients. If this variable is set, such strip-
ping is not performed, and comments are retained.
header Causes the header summary to be written at startup and after
commands that affect the number of messages or the order of mes-
sages in the current folder; enabled by default.
hold This option is used to hold messages in the system mailbox by
default.
ignore Causes interrupt signals from the terminal to be ignored and
echoed as @'s.
ignoreeof
An option related to dot is ignoreeof which makes mailx refuse
to accept a control-d as the end of a message. Ignoreeof also
applies to mailx command mode.
imap-use-starttls
Causes mailx to issue a STARTTLS command to make an unencrypted
IMAP session SSL/TLS encrypted. This functionality is not sup-
ported by all servers, and is not used if the session is already
encrypted by the IMAPS method.
imap-use-starttls-user@host
Activates imap-use-starttls for a specific account.
keep This option causes mailx to truncate the user's system mailbox
instead of deleting it when it is empty. This should always be
set, since it prevents malicious users from creating fake mail
folders in a world-writable spool directory.
keepsave
When a message is saved, it is usually discarded from the origi-
nating folder when mailx is quit. Setting this option causes
all saved message to be retained.
markanswered
When a message is replied to and this variable is set, it is
marked as having been answered. This mark has no technical
meaning in the mail system; it just causes messages to be marked
in the header summary, and makes them specially addressable.
metoo Usually, when a group is expanded that contains the sender, the
sender is removed from the expansion. Setting this option
causes the sender to be included in the group.
newmail
Checks for new mail in the current folder each time the prompt
is printed. For IMAP mailboxes, the server is then polled for
new mail, which may result in delayed operation if the connec-
tion to the server is slow. A maildir folder must be re-scanned
to determine if new mail has arrived.
If this variable is set to the special value nopoll, an IMAP
server is not actively asked for new mail, but new mail may
still be detected and announced with any other IMAP command that
is sent to the server. A maildir folder is not scanned then.
In any case, the IMAP server may send notifications about mes-
sages that have been deleted on the server by another process or
client. In this case, `Expunged n messages' is printed regard-
less of this variable, and message numbers may have changed.
noheader
Setting the option noheader is the same as giving the -N flag on
the command line.
outfolder
Causes the filename given in the record variable and the sender-
based filenames for the Copy and Save commands to be interpreted
relative to the directory given in the folder variable rather
than to the current directory unless it is an absolute pathname.
page If set, each message the pipe command prints out is followed by
a formfeed character.
piperaw
Send messages to the pipe command without performing MIME and
character set conversions.
pop3-use-apop
If this variable is set, the APOP authentication method is used
when a connection to a POP3 server is initiated. The advantage
of this method over the usual USER/PASS authentication is that
the password is not sent over the network in clear text. The
connection fails if the server does not support the APOP com-
mand.
pop3-use-apop-user@host
Enables pop3-use-apop for a specific account.
pop3-use-starttls
Causes mailx to issue a STLS command to make an unencrypted POP3
session SSL/TLS encrypted. This functionality is not supported
by all servers, and is not used if the session is already en-
crypted by the POP3S method.
pop3-use-starttls-user@host
Activates pop3-use-starttls for a specific account.
print-all-chars
This option causes all characters to be considered printable.
It is only effective if given in a startup file. With this op-
tion set, some character sequences in messages may put the
user's terminal in an undefined state when printed; it should
only be used as a last resort if no working system locale can be
found.
print-alternatives
When a MIME message part of type multipart/alternative is dis-
played and it contains a subpart of type text/plain, other parts
are normally discarded. Setting this variable causes all sub-
parts to be displayed, just as if the surrounding part was of
type multipart/mixed.
quiet Suppresses the printing of the version when first invoked.
record-resent
If both this variable and the record variable are set, the re-
send and Resend commands save messages to the record folder as
it is normally only done for newly composed messages.
reply-in-same-charset
If this variable is set, mailx first tries to use the same char-
acter set of the original message for replies. If this fails,
the sendcharsets variable is evaluated as usual.
Replyall
Reverses the sense of reply and Reply commands.
save When the user aborts a message with two RUBOUT (interrupt char-
acters) mailx copies the partial letter to the file `dead.let-
ter' in the home directory. This option is set by default.
searchheaders
If this option is set, then a message-list specifier in the form
`/x:y' will expand to all messages containing the substring `y'
in the header field `x'. The string search is case insensitive.
sendwait
When sending a message, wait until the mail transfer agent exits
before accepting further commands. If the mail transfer agent
returns a non-zero exit status, the exit status of mailx will
also be non-zero.
showlast
Setting this option causes mailx to start at the last message
instead of the first one when opening a mail folder.
showname
Causes mailx to use the sender's real name instead of the plain
address in the header field summary and in message specifica-
tions.
showto Causes the recipient of the message to be shown in the header
summary if the message was sent by the user.
skipemptybody
If an outgoing message does not contain any text in its first or
only message part, do not send it but discard it silently (see
also the -E option).
smime-force-encryption
Causes mailx to refuse sending unencrypted messages.
smime-sign
If this variable is set, outgoing messages are S/MIME signed
with the user's private key. Signing a message enables a recip-
ient to verify that the sender used a valid certificate, that
the email addresses in the certificate match those in the mes-
sage header, and that the message content has not been altered.
It does not change the message text, and people will be able to
read the message as usual.
smime-no-default-ca
Do not load the default CA locations when verifying S/MIME
signed messages. Only applicable if S/MIME support is built us-
ing OpenSSL.
smtp-use-starttls
Causes mailx to issue a STARTTLS command to make an SMTP session
SSL/TLS encrypted. Not all servers support this command; be-
cause of common implementation defects, it cannot be automati-
cally determined whether a server supports it or not.
ssl-no-default-ca
Do not load the default CA locations to verify SSL/TLS server
certificates. Only applicable if SSL/TLS support is built using
OpenSSL.
ssl-v2-allow
Accept SSLv2 connections. These are normally not allowed be-
cause this protocol version is insecure.
WARNING: on modern systems SSLv2 as well as SSLv3 are unavail-
able!
stealthmua
Inhibits the generation of the `Message-Id:' and `User-Agent:'
header fields that include obvious references to mailx. There
are two pitfalls associated with this: First, the message id of
outgoing messages is not known anymore. Second, an expert may
still use the remaining information in the header to track down
the originating mail user agent.
verbose
Setting the option verbose is the same as using the -v flag on
the command line. When mailx runs in verbose mode, details of
the actual message delivery and protocol conversations for IMAP,
POP3, and SMTP, as well as of other internal processes, are dis-
played on the user's terminal, This is sometimes useful to debug
problems. Mailx prints all data that is sent to remote servers
in clear texts, including passwords, so care should be taken
that no unauthorized option can view the screen if this option
is enabled.
writebackedited
If this variable is set, messages modified using the edit or
visual commands are written back to the current folder when it
is quit. This is only possible for writable folders in mbox
format. Setting this variable also disables MIME decoding and
decryption for the editing commands.
String Options
The string options include the following:
attrlist
A sequence of characters to print in the `attribute' column of a
header summary, each for one type of messages in the following
order: new, unread but old, new but read, read and old, saved,
preserved, mboxed, flagged, answered, draft, killed, start of a
collapsed thread, collapsed, classified as junk. The default is
`NUROSPMFATK+-J', or `NU *HMFATK+-J' if bsdflags or the SYSV3
environment variable are set.
autobcc
Specifies a list of recipients to which a blind carbon copy of
each outgoing message will be sent automatically.
autocc Specifies a list of recipients to which a carbon copy of each
outgoing message will be sent automatically.
autosort
Causes sorted mode (see the sort command) to be entered automat-
ically with the value of this option as sorting method when a
folder is opened.
cmd The default value for the pipe command.
crt The valued option crt is used as a threshold to determine how
long a message must be before PAGER is used to read it. If crt
is set without a value, then the height of the terminal screen
stored in the system is used to compute the threshold (see
stty(1)).
DEAD The name of the file to use for saving aborted messages. This
defaults to `dead.letter' in the user's home directory.
EDITOR Pathname of the text editor to use in the edit command and ~e
escape. If not defined, then a default editor is used.
encoding
The default MIME encoding to use in outgoing text messages and
message parts. Valid values are 8bit or quoted-printable. The
default is 8bit. In case the mail transfer system is not ESMTP
compliant, quoted-printable should be used instead. If there is
no need to encode a message, 7bit transfer mode is used, without
regard to the value of this variable. Binary data is always en-
coded in base64 mode.
escape If defined, the first character of this option gives the charac-
ter to use in the place of ~ to denote escapes.
folder The name of the directory to use for storing folders of mes-
sages. All folder names that begin with `+' refer to files be-
low that directory. If the directory name begins with a `/',
mailx considers it to be an absolute pathname; otherwise, the
folder directory is found relative to the user's home directory.
The directory name may also refer to an IMAP account; any names
that begin with `+' then refer to IMAP mailboxes on that ac-
count. An IMAP folder is normally given in the form
imaps://mylogin@imap.myisp.example
In this case, the `+' and `@' prefixes for folder names have the
same effect (see the folder command).
Some IMAP servers do not accept the creation of mailboxes in the
hierarchy base; they require that they are created as subfolders
of `INBOX'. With such servers, a folder name of the form
imaps://mylogin@imap.myisp.example/INBOX.
should be used (the last character is the server's hierarchy de-
limiter). Folder names prefixed by `+' will then refer to fold-
ers below `INBOX', while folder names prefixed by `@' refer to
folders below the hierarchy base. See the imap namespace com-
mand for a method to detect the appropriate prefix and delim-
iter.
folder-hook
When a folder is opened and this variable is set, the macro cor-
responding to the value of this variable is executed. The macro
is also invoked when new mail arrives, but message lists for
commands executed from the macro only include newly arrived mes-
sages then.
folder-hook-fullname
When a folder named fullname is opened, the macro corresponding
to the value of this variable is executed. Unlike other folder
specifications, the fully expanded name of a folder, without
metacharacters, is used to avoid ambiguities. The macro speci-
fied with folder-hook is not executed if this variable is effec-
tive for a folder (unless it is explicitly invoked within the
called macro).
from The address (or a list of addresses) to put into the `From:'
field of the message header. If replying to a message, these
addresses are handled as if they were in the alternates list.
If the machine's hostname is not valid at the Internet (for ex-
ample at a dialup machine), either this variable or hostname
have to be set to get correct Message-ID header fields. If from
contains more than one address, the sender variable must also be
set.
fwdheading
The string to print before the text of a message with the for-
ward command (unless the forward-as-attachment variable is set).
Defaults to ``-------- Original Message --------'' if unset. If
it is set to the empty string, no heading is printed.
headline
A format string to use for the header summary, similar to printf
formats. A `%' character introduces a format specifier. It may
be followed by a number indicating the field width. If the
field is a number, the width may be negative, which indicates
that it is to be left-aligned. Valid format specifiers are:
%a Message attributes.
%c The score of the message.
%d The date when the message was received.
%e The indenting level in threaded mode.
%f The address of the message sender.
%i The message thread structure.
%l The number of lines of the message.
%m Message number.
%o The number of octets (bytes) in the message.
%s Message subject (if any).
%S Message subject (if any) in double quotes.
%t The position in threaded/sorted order.
%> A `>' for the current message, otherwise ` '.
%< A `<' for the current message, otherwise ` '.
%% A `%' character.
The default is `%>%a%m %18f %16d %4l/%-5o %i%s', or
`%>%a%m %20f %16d %3l/%-5o %i%S' if bsdcompat is set.
hostname
Use this string as hostname when expanding local addresses in-
stead of the value obtained from uname(2) and getaddrinfo(3).
imap-auth
Sets the IMAP authentication method. Valid values are `login'
for the usual password-based authentication (the default),
`cram-md5', which is a password-based authentication that does
not send the password over the network in clear text, and `gss-
api' for GSSAPI-based authentication.
imap-auth-user@host
Sets the IMAP authentication method for a specific account.
imap-cache
Enables caching of IMAP mailboxes. The value of this variable
must point to a directory that is either existent or can be cre-
ated by mailx. All contents of the cache can be deleted by
mailx at any time; it is not safe to make assumptions about
them.
imap-keepalive
IMAP servers may close the connection after a period of inactiv-
ity; the standard requires this to be at least 30 minutes, but
practical experience may vary. Setting this variable to a nu-
meric value greater than 0 causes a NOOP command to be sent each
value seconds if no other operation is performed.
imap-list-depth
When retrieving the list of folders on an IMAP server, the fold-
ers command stops after it has reached a certain depth to avoid
possible infinite loops. The value of this variable sets the
maximum depth allowed. The default is 2. If the folder separa-
tor on the current IMAP server is a slash `/', this variable has
no effect, and the folders command does not descend to subfold-
ers.
indentprefix
String used by the `~m' and `~M' tilde escapes and by the quote
option for indenting messages, in place of the normal tab char-
acter (^I). Be sure to quote the value if it contains spaces or
tabs.
junkdb The location of the junk mail database. The string is treated
like a folder name, as described for the folder command.
The files in the junk mail database are normally stored in com-
press(1) format for saving space. If processing time is consid-
ered more important, uncompress(1) can be used to store them in
plain form. Mailx will then work using the uncompressed files.
LISTER Pathname of the directory lister to use in the folders command
when operating on local mailboxes. Default is /bin/ls.
MAIL Is used as the user's mailbox, if set. Otherwise, a system-de-
pendent default is used. Can be a protocol:// string (see the
folder command for more information).
MAILX_HEAD
A string to put at the beginning of each new message. The es-
cape sequences `\t' (tabulator) and `\n' (newline) are under-
stood.
MAILX_TAIL
A string to put at the end of each new message. The escape se-
quences `\t' (tabulator) and `\n' (newline) are understood.
maximum-unencoded-line-length
Messages that contain lines longer than the value of this vari-
able are encoded in quoted-printable even if they contain only
ASCII characters. The maximum effective value is 950. If set
to 0, all ASCII text messages are encoded in quoted-printable.
S/MIME signed messages are always encoded in quoted-printable
regardless of the value of this variable.
MBOX The name of the mbox file. It can be the name of a folder. The
default is `mbox' in the user's home directory.
NAIL_EXTRA_RC
The name of an optional startup file to be read after ~/.mailrc.
This variable is ignored if it is imported from the environment;
it has an effect only if it is set in /etc/mail.rc or ~/.mailrc
to allow bypassing the configuration with e. g.
`MAILRC=/dev/null'. Use this file for commands that are not un-
derstood by other mailx implementations.
newfolders
If this variable has the value maildir, newly created local
folders will be in maildir format.
nss-config-dir
A directory that contains the files certN.db to retrieve cer-
tificates, keyN.db to retrieve private keys, and secmod.db,
where N is a digit. These are usually taken from Mozilla in-
stallations, so an appropriate value might be `~/.mozilla/fire-
fox/default.clm'. Mailx opens these files read-only and does
not modify them. However, if the files are modified by Mozilla
while mailx is running, it will print a `Bad database' message.
It may be necessary to create copies of these files that are ex-
clusively used by mailx then. Only applicable if S/MIME and
SSL/TLS support is built using Network Security Services (NSS).
ORGANIZATION
The value to put into the `Organization:' field of the message
header.
PAGER Pathname of the program to use in the more command or when crt
variable is set. The default paginator pg(1) or, in BSD compat-
ibility mode, more(1) is used if this option is not defined.
password-user@host
Set the password for user when connecting to host. If no such
variable is defined for a host, the user will be asked for a
password on standard input. Specifying passwords in a startup
file is generally a security risk, the file should be readable
by the invoking user only.
pipe-content/subcontent
When a MIME message part of content/subcontent type is displayed
or it is replied to, its text is filtered through the value of
this variable interpreted as a shell command. Special care must
be taken when using such commands as mail viruses may be dis-
tributed by this method; if messages of type application/x-sh
were filtered through the shell, for example, a message sender
could easily execute arbitrary code on the system mailx is run-
ning on.
pop3-keepalive
POP3 servers may close the connection after a period of inactiv-
ity; the standard requires this to be at least 10 minutes, but
practical experience may vary. Setting this variable to a nu-
meric value greater than 0 causes a NOOP command to be sent each
value seconds if no other operation is performed.
prompt The string printed when a command is accepted. Defaults to
`? ', or to `& ' if the bsdcompat variable is set.
quote If set, mailx starts a replying message with the original mes-
sage prefixed by the value of the variable indentprefix. Nor-
mally, a heading consisting of `Fromheaderfield wrote:' is
printed before the quotation. If the string noheading is as-
signed to the quote variable, this heading is omitted. If the
string headers is assigned, the headers selected by the ig-
nore/retain commands are printed above the message body, thus
quote acts like an automatic ~m command then. If the string
allheaders is assigned, all headers are printed above the mes-
sage body, and all MIME parts are included, thus quote acts like
an automatic ~M command then.
record If defined, gives the pathname of the folder used to record all
outgoing mail. If not defined, then outgoing mail is not so
saved. When saving to this folder fails, the message is not
sent but saved to the `dead.letter' file instead.
replyto
A list of addresses to put into the `Reply-To:' field of the
message header. If replying to a message, such addresses are
handled as if they were in the alternates list.
screen When mailx initially prints the message headers, it determines
the number to print by looking at the speed of the terminal.
The faster the terminal, the more it prints. This option over-
rides this calculation and specifies how many message headers
are printed. This number is also used for scrolling with the z
command.
sendcharsets
A comma-separated list of character set names that can be used
in Internet mail. When a message that contains characters not
representable in US-ASCII is prepared for sending, mailx tries
to convert its text to each of the given character sets in order
and uses the first appropriate one. The default is `utf-8'.
Character sets assigned to this variable should be ordered in
ascending complexity. That is, the list should start with e.g.
`iso-8859-1' for compatibility with older mail clients, might
contain some other language-specific character sets, and should
end with `utf-8' to handle messages that combine texts in multi-
ple languages.
sender An address that is put into the `Sender:' field of outgoing mes-
sages. This field needs not normally be present. It is, how-
ever, required if the `From:' field contains more than one ad-
dress. It can also be used to indicate that a message was sent
on behalf of somebody other; in this case, `From:' should con-
tain the address of the person that took responsibility for the
message, and `Sender:' should contain the address of the person
that actually sent the message. The sender address is handled
as if it were in the alternates list.
sendmail
To use an alternate mail delivery system, set this option to the
full pathname of the program to use. This should be used with
care.
SHELL Pathname of the shell to use in the ! command and the ~! escape.
A default shell is used if this option is not defined.
Sign A string for use with the ~A command.
sign A string for use with the ~a command.
signature
Must correspond to the name of a readable file if set. The
file's content is then appended to each singlepart message and
to the first part of each multipart message. Be warned that
there is no possibility to edit the signature for an individual
message.
smime-ca-dir
Specifies a directory with CA certificates for verification of
S/MIME signed messages. The format is the same as described in
SSL_CTX_load_verify_locations(3). Only applicable if S/MIME
support is built using OpenSSL.
smime-ca-file
Specifies a file with CA certificates for verification of S/MIME
signed messages. The format is the same as described in
SSL_CTX_load_verify_locations(3). Only applicable if S/MIME
support is built using OpenSSL.
smime-cipher-user@host
Specifies a cipher to use when generating S/MIME encrypted mes-
sages for user@host. Valid ciphers are rc2-40 (RC2 with 40
bits), rc2-64 (RC2 with 64 bits), des (DES, 56 bits) and des-
ede3 (3DES, 112/168 bits). The default is 3DES. It is not rec-
ommended to use the other ciphers unless a recipient's client is
actually unable to handle 3DES since they are comparatively
weak; but even so, the recipient should upgrade his software in
preference.
smime-crl-file
Specifies a file that contains a CRL in PEM format to use when
verifying S/MIME messages. Only applicable if S/MIME support is
built using OpenSSL.
smime-crl-dir
Specifies a directory that contains files with CRLs in PEM for-
mat to use when verifying S/MIME messages. Only applicable if
S/MIME support is built using OpenSSL.
smime-encrypt-user@host
If this variable is set, messages to user@host are encrypted be-
fore sending. If S/MIME support is built using OpenSSL, the
value of the variable must be set to the name of a file that
contains a certificate in PEM format. If S/MIME support is
built using NSS, the value of this variable is ignored, but if
multiple certificates for user@host are available, the smime-
nickname-user@host variable should be set. Otherwise a certifi-
cate for the recipient is automatically retrieved from the cer-
tificate database, if possible.
If a message is sent to multiple recipients, each of them for
whom a corresponding variable is set will receive an individu-
ally encrypted message; other recipients will continue to re-
ceive the message in plain text unless the smime-force-encryp-
tion variable is set. It is recommended to sign encrypted mes-
sages, i.e. to also set the smime-sign variable.
smime-nickname-user@host
Specifies the nickname of a certificate to be used when encrypt-
ing messages for user@host . Only applicable if S/MIME support
is built using NSS.
smime-sign-cert
Points to a file in PEM format that contains the user's private
key as well as his certificate. Both are used with S/MIME for
signing and decrypting messages. Only applicable if S/MIME sup-
port is built using OpenSSL.
smime-sign-cert-user@host
Overrides smime-sign-cert for the specific addresses. When
signing messages and the value of the from variable is set to
user@host, the specific file is used. When decrypting messages,
their recipient fields (To: and Cc:) are searched for addresses
for which such a variable is set. Mailx always uses the first
address that matches, so if the same message is sent to more
than one of the user's addresses using different encryption
keys, decryption might fail. Only applicable if S/MIME support
is built using OpenSSL.
smime-sign-nickname
Specifies that the named certificate be used for signing mail.
If this variable is not set, but a single certificate matching
the current from address is found in the database, that one is
used automatically. Only applicable if S/MIME support is built
using NSS.
smime-sign-nickname-user@host
Overrides smime-sign-nickname for a specific address. Only ap-
plicable if S/MIME support is built using NSS.
smtp Normally, mailx invokes sendmail(8) directly to transfer mes-
sages. If the smtp variable is set, a SMTP connection to the
server specified by the value of this variable is used instead.
If the SMTP server does not use the standard port, a value of
server:port can be given, with port as a name or as a number.
There are two possible methods to get SSL/TLS encrypted SMTP
sessions: First, the STARTTLS command can be used to encrypt a
session after it has been initiated, but before any user-related
data has been sent; see smtp-use-starttls above. Second, some
servers accept sessions that are encrypted from their beginning
on. This mode is configured by assigning smtps://server[:port]
to the smtp variable.
The SMTP transfer is executed in a child process; unless either
the sendwait or the verbose variable is set, this process runs
asynchronously. If it receives a TERM signal, it will abort and
save the message to the `dead.letter' file.
smtp-auth
Sets the SMTP authentication method. If set to `login', or if
unset and smtp-auth-user is set, AUTH LOGIN is used. If set to
`cram-md5', AUTH CRAM-MD5 is used; if set to `plain', AUTH PLAIN
is used. Otherwise, no SMTP authentication is performed.
smtp-auth-user@host
Overrides smtp-auth for specific values of sender addresses, de-
pending on the from variable.
smtp-auth-password
Sets the global password for SMTP AUTH. Both user and password
have to be given for AUTH LOGIN and AUTH CRAM-MD5.
smtp-auth-password-user@host
Overrides smtp-auth-password for specific values of sender ad-
dresses, depending on the from variable.
smtp-auth-user
Sets the global user name for SMTP AUTH. Both user and password
have to be given for AUTH LOGIN and AUTH CRAM-MD5.
If this variable is set but neither smtp-auth-password or a
matching smtp-auth-password-user@host can be found, mailx will
as for a password on the user's terminal.
smtp-auth-user-user@host
Overrides smtp-auth-user for specific values of sender ad-
dresses, depending on the from variable.
ssl-ca-dir
Specifies a directory with CA certificates for verification of
SSL/TLS server certificates. See SSL_CTX_load_verify_loca-
tions(3) for more information. Only applicable if SSL/TLS sup-
port is built using OpenSSL.
ssl-ca-file
Specifies a file with CA certificates for verification of
SSL/TLS server certificates. See SSL_CTX_load_verify_loca-
tions(3) for more information. Only applicable if SSL/TLS sup-
port is built using OpenSSL.
ssl-cert
Sets the file name for a SSL/TLS client certificate required by
some servers. Only applicable if SSL/TLS support is built using
OpenSSL.
ssl-cert-user@host
Sets an account-specific file name for a SSL/TLS client certifi-
cate required by some servers. Overrides ssl-cert for the spec-
ified account. Only applicable if SSL/TLS support is built us-
ing OpenSSL.
ssl-cipher-list
Specifies a list of ciphers for SSL/TLS connections. See ci-
phers(1) for more information. Only applicable if SSL/TLS sup-
port is built using OpenSSL.
ssl-crl-file
Specifies a file that contains a CRL in PEM format to use when
verifying SSL/TLS server certificates. Only applicable if
SSL/TLS support is built using OpenSSL.
ssl-crl-dir
Specifies a directory that contains files with CRLs in PEM for-
mat to use when verifying SSL/TLS server certificates. Only ap-
plicable if SSL/TLS support is built using OpenSSL.
ssl-key
Sets the file name for the private key of a SSL/TLS client cer-
tificate. If unset, the name of the certificate file is used.
The file is expected to be in PEM format. Only applicable if
SSL/TLS support is built using OpenSSL.
ssl-key-user@host
Sets an account-specific file name for the private key of a
SSL/TLS client certificate. Overrides ssl-key for the specified
account. Only applicable if SSL/TLS support is built using
OpenSSL.
ssl-method
Selects a SSL/TLS protocol version; valid values are `ssl2',
`ssl3', and `tls1'. If unset, the method is selected automati-
cally, if possible.
WARNING: Do not use this option. 'ssl2', 'ssl3' are no longer
available and 'tls1' forces use of TLS 1.0
ssl-method-user@host
Overrides ssl-method for a specific account.
ssl-rand-egd
Gives the pathname to an entropy daemon socket, see RAND_egd(3).
WARNING: On Linux this API is unavailable.
ssl-rand-file
Gives the pathname to a file with entropy data, see
RAND_load_file(3). If the file is a regular file writable by
the invoking user, new data is written to it after it has been
loaded. Only applicable if SSL/TLS support is built using
OpenSSL.
WARNING: On linux the CSPRNG is seeded automatically and this
option has no effect.
ssl-verify
Sets the action to be performed if an error occurs during
SSL/TLS server certificate validation. Valid values are
`strict' (fail and close connection immediately), `ask' (ask
whether to continue on standard input), `warn' (print a warning
and continue), `ignore' (do not perform validation). The de-
fault is `ask'.
ssl-verify-user@host
Overrides ssl-verify for a specific account.
toplines
If defined, gives the number of lines of a message to be printed
out with the top command; normally, the first five lines are
printed.
ttycharset
The character set of the terminal mailx operates on. There is
normally no need to set this variable since mailx can determine
this automatically by looking at the LC_CTYPE locale setting; if
this succeeds, the value is assigned at startup and will be dis-
played by the set command. Note that this is not necessarily a
character set name that can be used in Internet messages.
VISUAL Pathname of the text editor to use in the visual command and ~v
escape.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
Besides the variables described above, mailx uses the following envi-
ronment strings:
HOME The user's home directory.
LANG, LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES
See locale(7).
MAILRC Is used as startup file instead of ~/.mailrc if set. When mailx
scripts are invoked on behalf of other users, this variable
should be set to `/dev/null' to avoid side-effects from reading
their configuration files.
NAILRC If this variable is set and MAILRC is not set, it is read as
startup file.
SYSV3 Changes the letters printed in the first column of a header sum-
mary.
TMPDIR Used as directory for temporary files instead of /tmp, if set.
FILES
~/.mailrc
File giving initial commands.
/etc/mail.rc
System wide initialization file.
~/.mime.types
Personal MIME types.
/etc/mime.types
System wide MIME types.
EXAMPLES
Getting started
The mailx command has two distinct usages, according to whether one
wants to send or receive mail. Sending mail is simple: to send a mes-
sage to a user whose email address is, say, <bill@host.example>, use
the shell command:
$ mailx bill@host.example
then type your message. Mailx will prompt you for a message subject
first; after that, lines typed by you form the body of the message.
When you reach the end of the message, type an EOT (control-d) at the
beginning of a line, which will cause mailx to echo `EOT' and return
you to the shell.
If, while you are composing the message you decide that you do not wish
to send it after all, you can abort the letter with a RUBOUT. Typing a
single RUBOUT causes mailx to print `(Interrupt -- one more to kill
letter)'. Typing a second RUBOUT causes mailx to save your partial
letter on the file `dead.letter' in your home directory and abort the
letter. Once you have sent mail to someone, there is no way to undo
the act, so be careful.
If you want to send the same message to several other people, you can
list their email addresses on the command line. Thus,
$ mailx sam@workstation.example bob@server.example
Subject: Fees
Tuition fees are due next Friday. Don't forget!
<Control-d>
EOT
$
will send the reminder to <sam@workstation.example>. and
<bob@server.example>.
To read your mail, simply type
$ mailx
Mailx will respond by typing its version number and date and then list-
ing the messages you have waiting. Then it will type a prompt and
await your command. The messages are assigned numbers starting with
1--you refer to the messages with these numbers. Mailx keeps track of
which messages are new (have been sent since you last read your mail)
and read (have been read by you). New messages have an N next to them
in the header listing and old, but unread messages have a U next to
them. Mailx keeps track of new/old and read/unread messages by putting
a header field called Status into your messages.
To look at a specific message, use the type command, which may be ab-
breviated to simply t . For example, if you had the following mes-
sages:
O 1 drfoo@myhost.example Wed Sep 1 19:52 18/631 "Fees"
O 2 sam@friends.example Thu Sep 2 00:08 30/895
you could examine the first message by giving the command:
type 1
which might cause mailx to respond with, for example:
Message 1:
From drfoo@myhost.example Wed Sep 1 19:52:25 2004
Subject: Fees
Status: R
Tuition fees are due next Wednesday. Don't forget!
Many mailx commands that operate on messages take a message number as
an argument like the type command. For these commands, there is a no-
tion of a current message. When you enter the mailx program, the cur-
rent message is initially the first (or the first recent) one. Thus,
you can often omit the message number and use, for example,
t
to type the current message. As a further shorthand, you can type a
message by simply giving its message number. Hence,
1
would type the first message.
Frequently, it is useful to read the messages in your mailbox in order,
one after another. You can read the next message in mailx by simply
typing a newline. As a special case, you can type a newline as your
first command to mailx to type the first message.
If, after typing a message, you wish to immediately send a reply, you
can do so with the reply command. This command, like type, takes a
message number as an argument. mailx then begins a message addressed
to the user who sent you the message. You may then type in your letter
in reply, followed by a <control-d> at the beginning of a line, as be-
fore.
Note that mailx copies the subject header from the original message.
This is useful in that correspondence about a particular matter will
tend to retain the same subject heading, making it easy to recognize.
If there are other header fields in the message, like `Cc:', the infor-
mation found will also be used.
Sometimes you will receive a message that has been sent to several peo-
ple and wish to reply only to the person who sent it. Reply with a
capital R replies to a message, but sends a copy to the sender only.
If you wish, while reading your mail, to send a message to someone, but
not as a reply to one of your messages, you can send the message di-
rectly with the mail command, which takes as arguments the names of the
recipients you wish to send to. For example, to send a message to
<frank@machine.example>, you would do:
mail frank@machine.example
To delete a message from the mail folder, you can use the delete com-
mand. In addition to not saving deleted messages, mailx will not let
you type them, either. The effect is to make the message disappear al-
together, along with its number.
Many features of mailx can be tailored to your liking with the set com-
mand. The set command has two forms, depending on whether you are set-
ting a binary option or a valued option. Binary options are either on
or off. For example, the askcc option informs mailx that each time you
send a message, you want it to prompt you for a `Cc:' header, to be in-
cluded in the message. To set the askcc option, you would type
set askcc
Valued options are values which mailx uses to adapt to your tastes.
For example, the record option tells mailx where to save messages sent
by you, and is specified by
set record=Sent
for example. Note that no spaces are allowed in set record=Sent .
Mailx includes a simple facility for maintaining groups of messages to-
gether in folders. To use the folder facility, you must tell mailx
where you wish to keep your folders. Each folder of messages will be a
single file. For convenience, all of your folders are kept in a single
directory of your choosing. To tell mailx where your folder directory
is, put a line of the form
set folder=letters
in your .mailrc file. If, as in the example above, your folder direc-
tory does not begin with a `/', mailx will assume that your folder di-
rectory is to be found starting from your home directory.
Anywhere a file name is expected, you can use a folder name, preceded
with `+'. For example, to put a message into a folder with the save
command, you can use:
save +classwork
to save the current message in the classwork folder. If the classwork
folder does not yet exist, it will be created. Note that messages
which are saved with the save command are automatically removed from
your system mailbox.
In order to make a copy of a message in a folder without causing that
message to be removed from your system mailbox, use the copy command,
which is identical in all other respects to the save command.
The folder command can be used to direct mailx to the contents of a
different folder. For example,
folder +classwork
directs mailx to read the contents of the classwork folder. All of the
commands that you can use on your system mailbox are also applicable to
folders, including type, delete, and reply. To inquire which folder
you are currently editing, use simply:
folder
To list your current set of folders, use the folders command.
Finally, the help command is available to print out a brief summary of
the most important mailx commands.
While typing in a message to be sent to others, it is often useful to
be able to invoke the text editor on the partial message, print the
message, execute a shell command, or do some other auxiliary function.
Mailx provides these capabilities through tilde escapes , which consist
of a tilde (~) at the beginning of a line, followed by a single charac-
ter which indicates the function to be performed. For example, to
print the text of the message so far, use:
~p
which will print a line of dashes, the recipients of your message, and
the text of the message so far. A list of the most important tilde es-
capes is available with `~?'.
IMAP or POP3 client setup
First you need the following data from your ISP: the host name of the
IMAP or POP3 server, user name and password for this server, and a no-
tice whether the server uses SSL/TLS encryption. Assuming the host
name is `server.myisp.example' and your user name for that server is
`mylogin', you can refer to this account using the folder command or -f
command line option with
imaps://mylogin@server.myisp.example
(This string is not necessarily the same as your Internet mail ad-
dress.) You can replace `imaps://' with `imap://' if the server does
not support SSL/TLS. (If SSL/TLS support is built using NSS, the nss-
config-dir variable must be set before a connection can be initiated,
see above). Use `pop3s://' or `pop3://' if the server does not offer
IMAP. You should use IMAP if you can, though; first because it re-
quires fewer network operations than POP3 to get the contents of the
mailbox and is thus faster; and second because message attributes are
maintained by the IMAP server, so you can easily distinguish new and
old messages each time you connect. Even if the server does not accept
IMAPS or POP3S connections, it is possible that it supports the START-
TLS method to make a session SSL/TLS encrypted after the initial con-
nection has been performed, but before authentication begins. The only
reliable method to see if this works is to try it; enter one of
set imap-use-starttls
set pop3-use-starttls
before you initiate the connection.
As you probably want messages to be deleted from this account after
saving them, prefix it with `%:'. The shortcut command can be used to
avoid typing that many characters every time you want to connect:
shortcut myisp %:imaps://mylogin@server.myisp.example
You might want to put this string into a startup file. As the shortcut
command is specific to this implementation of mailx and will confuse
other implementations, it should not be used in ~/.mailrc, instead, put
set NAIL_EXTRA_RC=~/.nailrc
in ~/.mailrc and create a file ~/.nailrc containing the shortcut com-
mand above. You can then access your remote mailbox by invoking `mailx
-f myisp' on the command line, or by executing `fi myisp' within mailx.
If you want to use more than one IMAP mailbox on a server, or if you
want to use the IMAP server for mail storage too, the account command
(which is also mailx-specific) is more appropriate than the shortcut
command. You can put the following in ~/.nailrc:
account myisp {
set folder=imaps://mylogin@server.myisp.example
set record=+Sent MBOX=+mbox outfolder
}
and can then access incoming mail for this account by invoking `mailx
-A myisp' on the command line, or by executing `ac myisp' within mailx.
After that, a command like `copy 1 +otherfolder' will refer to other-
folder on the IMAP server. In particular, `fi &' will change to the
mbox folder, and `fi +Sent' will show your recorded sent mail, with
both folders located on the IMAP server.
Mailx will ask you for a password string each time you connect to a re-
mote account. If you can reasonably trust the security of your work-
station, you can give this password in the startup file as
set password-mylogin@server.myisp.example="SECRET"
You should change the permissions of this file to 0600, see chmod(1).
Mailx supports different authentication methods for both IMAP and POP3.
If Kerberos is used at your location, you can try to activate GSSAPI-
based authentication by
set imap-auth=gssapi
The advantage of this method is that mailx does not need to know your
password at all, nor needs to send sensitive data over the network.
Otherwise, the options
set imap-auth=cram-md5
set pop3-use-apop
for IMAP and POP3, respectively, offer authentication methods that
avoid to send the password in clear text over the network, which is es-
pecially important if SSL/TLS cannot be used. If the server does not
offer any of these authentication methods, conventional user/password
based authentication must be used. It is sometimes helpful to set the
verbose option when authentication problems occur. Mailx will display
all data sent to the server in clear text on the screen with this op-
tion, including passwords. You should thus take care that no unautho-
rized person can look at your terminal when this option is set.
If you regularly use the same workstation to access IMAP accounts, you
can greatly enhance performance by enabling local caching of IMAP mes-
sages. For any message that has been fully or partially fetched from
the server, a local copy is made and is used when the message is ac-
cessed again, so most data is transferred over the network once only.
To enable the IMAP cache, select a local directory name and put
set imap-cache=~/localdirectory
in the startup file. All files within that directory can be overwrit-
ten or deleted by mailx at any time, so you should not use the direc-
tory to store other information.
Once the cache contains some messages, it is not strictly necessary
anymore to open a connection to the IMAP server to access them. When
mailx is invoked with the -D option, or when the disconnected variable
is set, only cached data is used for any folder you open. Messages
that have not yet been completely cached are not available then, but
all other messages can be handled as usual. Changes made to IMAP mail-
boxes in disconnected mode are committed to the IMAP server next time
it is used in online mode. Synchronizing the local status with the
status on the server is thus partially within your responsibility; if
you forget to initiate a connection to the server again before you
leave your location, changes made on one workstation are not available
on others. Also if you alter IMAP mailboxes from a workstation while
uncommitted changes are still pending on another, the latter data may
become invalid. The same might also happen because of internal server
status changes. You should thus carefully evaluate this feature in
your environment before you rely on it.
Many servers will close the connection after a short period of inactiv-
ity. Use one of
set pop3-keepalive=30
set imap-keepalive=240
to send a keepalive message each 30 seconds for POP3, or each 4 minutes
for IMAP.
If you encounter problems connecting to a SSL/TLS server, try the ssl-
rand-egd and ssl-rand-file variables (see the OpenSSL FAQ for more in-
formation) or specify the protocol version with ssl-method. Contact
your ISP if you need a client certificate or if verification of the
server certificate fails. If the failed certificate is indeed valid,
fetch its CA certificate by executing the shell command
$ openssl s_client </dev/null -showcerts -connect \
server.myisp.example:imaps 2>&1 | tee log
(see s_client(1)) and put it into the file specified with ssl-ca-file.
The data you need is located at the end of the certificate chain within
(and including) the `BEGIN CERTIFICATE' and `END CERTIFICATE' lines.
(Note that it is possible to fetch a forged certificate by this method.
You can only completely rely on the authenticity of the CA certificate
if you fetch it in a way that is trusted by other means, such as by
personally receiving the certificate on storage media.)
Creating a score file or message filter
The scoring commands are best separated from other configuration for
clarity, and are mostly mailx specific. It is thus recommended to put
them in a separate file that is sourced from your NAIL_EXTRA_RC as fol-
lows:
source ~/.scores
The .scores file could then look as follows:
define list {
score (subject "important discussion") +10
score (subject "annoying discussion") -10
score (from "nicefellow@goodnet") +15
score (from "badguy@poornet") -5
move (header x-spam-flag "+++++") +junk
}
set folder-hook-imap://user@host/public.list=list
In this scheme, you would see any mail from `nicefellow@goodnet', even
if the surrounding discussion is annoying; but you normally would not
see mail from `badguy@poornet', unless he participates in the important
discussion. Messages that are marked with five or more plus characters
in their `X-Spam-Flag' field (inserted by some server-side filtering
software) are moved to the folder `junk' in the folder directory.
Be aware that all criteria in () lead to substring matches, so you
would also score messages from e.g. `notsobadguy@poornetmakers' nega-
tive here. It is possible to select addresses exactly using "address"
message specifications, but these cannot be executed remotely and will
thus cause all headers to be downloaded from IMAP servers while looking
for matches.
When searching messages on an IMAP server, best performance is usually
achieved by sending as many criteria as possible in one large () speci-
fication, because each single such specification will result in a sepa-
rate network operation.
Activating the Bayesian filter
The Bayesian junk mail filter works by examining the words contained in
messages. You decide yourself what a good and what a bad message is.
Thus the resulting filter is your very personal one; once it is cor-
rectly set up, it will filter only messages similar to those previously
specified by you.
To use the Bayesian filter, a location for the junk mail database must
be defined first:
set junkdb=~/.junkdb
The junk mail database does not contain actual words extracted from
messages, but hashed representations of them. A foreign person who can
read the database could only examine the frequency of previously known
words in your mail.
If you have sufficient disk space (several 10 MB) available, it is rec-
ommended that you set the chained-junk-tokens option. The filter will
then also consider two-word tokens, improving its accuracy.
A set of good messages and junk messages must now be available; it is
also possible to use the incoming new messages for this purpose, al-
though it will of course take some time until the filter becomes useful
then. Do not underestimate the amount of statistical data needed; some
hundred messages are typically necessary to get satisfactory results,
and many thousand messages for best operation. You have to pass the
good messages to the good command, and the junk messages to the junk
command. If you ever accidentally mark a good message as junk or vice-
versa, call the ungood or unjunk command to correct this.
Once a reasonable amount of statistics has been collected, new messages
can be classified automatically. The classify command marks all mes-
sages that the filter considers to be junk, but it does not perform any
action on them by default. It is recommended that you move these mes-
sages into a separate folder just for the case that false positives oc-
cur, or to pass them to the junk command later again to further improve
the junk mail database. To automatically move incoming junk messages
every time the inbox is opened, put lines like the following into your
.scores file (or whatever name you gave to the file in the last exam-
ple):
define junkfilter {
classify (smaller 20000) :n
move :j +junk
}
set folder-hook-imap://user@host/INBOX=junkfilter
If you set the verbose option before running the classify command,
mailx prints the words it uses for calculating the junk status along
with their statistical probabilities. This can help you to find out
why some messages are not classified as you would like them to be. To
see the statistical probability of a given word, use the probability
command.
If a junk message was not recognized as such, use the junk command to
correct this. Also if you encounter a false positive (a good message
that was wrongly classified as junk), pass it to the good command.
Since the classify command must examine the entire text of all new mes-
sages in the respective folder, this will also cause all of them to be
downloaded from the IMAP server. You should thus restrict the size of
messages for automatic filtering. If server-based filtering is also
available, you might try if that works for you first.
Reading HTML mail
You need either the w3m or lynx utility or another command-line web
browser that can write plain text to standard output.
set pipe-text/html="w3m -dump -T text/html"
or
set pipe-text/html="lynx -dump -force_html /dev/stdin"
will then cause HTML message parts to be converted into a more friendly
form.
Viewing PDF attachments
Most PDF viewers do not accept input directly from a pipe. It is thus
necessary to store the attachment in a temporary file, as with
set pipe-application/pdf="cat >/tmp/mailx$$.pdf; \
acroread /tmp/mailx$$.pdf; rm /tmp/mailx$$.pdf"
Note that security defects are discovered in PDF viewers from time to
time. Automatical command execution like this can compromise your sys-
tem security, in particular if you stay not always informed about such
issues.
Signed and encrypted messages with S/MIME
S/MIME provides two central mechanisms: message signing and message en-
cryption. A signed message contains some data in addition to the regu-
lar text. The data can be used to verify that the message was sent us-
ing a valid certificate, that the sender's address in the message
header matches that in the certificate, and that the message text has
not been altered. Signing a message does not change its regular text;
it can be read regardless of whether the recipient's software is able
to handle S/MIME. It is thus usually possible to sign all outgoing
messages if so desired.--Encryption, in contrast, makes the message
text invisible for all people except those who have access to the se-
cret decryption key. To encrypt a message, the specific recipient's
public encryption key must be known. It is thus not possible to send
encrypted mail to people unless their key has been retrieved from ei-
ther previous communication or public key directories. A message
should always be signed before it is encrypted. Otherwise, it is still
possible that the encrypted message text is altered.
A central concept to S/MIME is that of the certification authority
(CA). A CA is a trusted institution that issues certificates. For
each of these certificates, it can be verified that it really origi-
nates from the CA, provided that the CA's own certificate is previously
known. A set of CA certificates is usually delivered with OpenSSL and
installed on your system. If you trust the source of your OpenSSL
software installation, this offers reasonable security for S/MIME on
the Internet. In general, a certificate cannot be more secure than the
method its CA certificate has been retrieved with, though. Thus if you
download a CA certificate from the Internet, you can only trust the
messages you verify using that certificate as much as you trust the
download process.
The first thing you need for participating in S/MIME message exchange
is your personal certificate, including a private key. The certificate
contains public information, in particular your name and your email ad-
dress, and the public key that is used by others to encrypt messages
for you, and to verify signed messages they supposedly received from
you. The certificate is included in each signed message you send. The
private key must be kept secret. It is used to decrypt messages that
were previously encrypted with your public key, and to sign messages.
For personal use, it is recommended that you get a S/MIME certificate
from one of the major CAs on the Internet using your WWW browser.
(Many CAs offer such certificates for free.) You will usually receive
a combined certificate and private key in PKCS#12 format which mailx
does not directly accept if S/MIME support is built using OpenSSL. To
convert it to PEM format, use the following shell command:
$ openssl pkcs12 -in cert.p12 -out cert.pem -clcerts \
-nodes
If you omit the -nodes parameter, you can specifiy an additional PEM
pass phrase for protecting the private key. Mailx will then ask you
for that pass phrase each time it signs or decrypts a message. You can
then use
set smime-sign-cert-myname@myisp.example=cert.pem
to make this private key and certificate known to mailx.
If S/MIME support is built using NSS, the PKCS#12 file must be in-
stalled using Mozilla (provided that nss-config-dir is set appropri-
ately, see above), and no further action is necessary unless multiple
user certificates for the same email address are installed. In this
case, the smime-sign-nickname variable has to be set appropriately.
You can now sign outgoing messages. Just use
set smime-sign
to do so.
From each signed message you send, the recipient can fetch your cer-
tificate and use it to send encrypted mail back to you. Accordingly if
somebody sends you a signed message, you can do the same. First use
the verify command to check the validity of the certificate. After
that, retrieve the certificate and tell mailx that it should use it for
encryption:
certsave filename
set smime-encrypt-user@host=filename
If S/MIME support is built using NSS, the saved certificate must be in-
stalled using Mozilla. The value of the smime-encrypt-user@host is ig-
nored then, but if multiple certificates for the recipient are avail-
able, the smime-nickname-user@host variable must be set.
You should carefully consider if you prefer to store encrypted messages
in decrypted form. If you do, anybody who has access to your mail
folders can read them, but if you do not, you might be unable to read
them yourself later if you happen to lose your private key. The de-
crypt command saves messages in decrypted form, while the save, copy,
and move commands leave them encrypted.
Note that neither S/MIME signing nor encryption applies to message sub-
jects or other header fields. Thus they may not contain sensitive in-
formation for encrypted messages, and cannot be trusted even if the
message content has been verified. When sending signed messages, it is
recommended to repeat any important header information in the message
text.
Using CRLs with S/MIME or SSL/TLS
Certification authorities (CAs) issue certificate revocation lists
(CRLs) on a regular basis. These lists contain the serial numbers of
certificates that have been declared invalid after they have been is-
sued. Such usually happens because the private key for the certificate
has been compromised, because the owner of the certificate has left the
organization that is mentioned in the certificate, etc. To seriously
use S/MIME or SSL/TLS verification, an up-to-date CRL is required for
each trusted CA. There is otherwise no method to distinguish between
valid and invalidated certificates. Mailx currently offers no mecha-
nism to fetch CRLs, or to access them on the Internet, so you have to
retrieve them by some external mechanism.
If S/MIME and SSL/TLS support are built using OpenSSL, mailx accepts
CRLs in PEM format only; CRLs in DER format must be converted, e.g.
with the shell command
$ openssl crl -inform DER -in crl.der -out crl.pem
To tell mailx about the CRLs, a directory that contains all CRL files
(and no other files) must be created. The smime-crl-dir or ssl-crl-dir
variables, respectively, must then be set to point to that directory.
After that, mailx requires a CRL to be present for each CA that is used
to verify a certificate.
If S/MIME and SSL/TLS support are built using NSS, CRLs can be imported
in Mozilla applications (provided that nss-config-dir is set appropri-
ately).
Sending mail from scripts
If you want to send mail from scripts, you must be aware that mailx
reads the user's configuration files by default. So unless your script
is only intended for your own personal use (as e.g. a cron job), you
need to circumvent this by invoking mailx like
MAILRC=/dev/null mailx -n
You then need to create a configuration for mailx for your script.
This can be done by either pointing the MAILRC variable to a custom
configuration file, or by passing the configuration in environment
variables. Since many of the configuration options are not valid shell
variables, the env command is useful in this situation. An invocation
could thus look like
env MAILRC=/dev/null from=scriptreply@domain smtp=host \
smtp-auth-user=login smtp-auth-password=secret \
smtp-auth=login mailx -n -s "subject" \
-a attachment_file recipient@domain <content_file
SEE ALSO
fmt(1), newaliases(1), openssl(1), pg(1), more(1), vacation(1), ssl(3),
aliases(5), locale(7), mailaddr(7), sendmail(8)
NOTES
If used in systemd unit files not using Type=forking it is required to
set the option sendwait on the command line of mailx(1) with -S send-
wait=yes as otherwise it might happen that the systemd(1) service man-
ager will terminate the asynchronously started SMTP transfer as de-
scribed at the option smtp.
Variables in the environment passed to mailx cannot be unset.
The character set conversion relies on the iconv(3) function. Its
functionality differs widely between the various system environments
mailx runs on. If the message `Cannot convert from a to b' appears,
either some characters within the message header or text are not appro-
priate for the currently selected terminal character set, or the needed
conversion is not supported by the system. In the first case, it is
necessary to set an appropriate LC_CTYPE locale (e.g. en_US) or the
ttycharset variable. In the second case, the sendcharsets and tty-
charset variables must be set to the same value to inhibit character
set conversion. If iconv() is not available at all, the value assigned
to sendcharsets must match the character set that is used on the termi-
nal.
Mailx expects input text to be in Unix format, with lines separated by
newline (^J, \n) characters only. Non-Unix text files that use car-
riage return (^M, \r) characters in addition will be treated as binary
data; to send such files as text, strip these characters e. g. by
tr -d '\015' <input | mailx . . .
or fix the tools that generate them.
Limitations with IMAP mailboxes are: It is not possible to edit mes-
sages, but it is possible to append them. Thus to edit a message, cre-
ate a local copy of it, edit it, append it, and delete the original.
The line count for the header display is only appropriate if the entire
message has been downloaded from the server. The marking of messages
as `new' is performed by the IMAP server; use of the exit command in-
stead of quit will not cause it to be reset, and if the autoinc/newmail
variables are unset, messages that arrived during a session will not be
in state `new' anymore when the folder is opened again. Also if com-
mands queued in disconnected mode are committed, the IMAP server will
delete the `new' flag for all messages in the changed folder, and new
messages will appear as unread when it is selected for viewing later.
The `flagged', `answered', and `draft' attributes are usually perma-
nent, but some IMAP servers are known to drop them without notifica-
tion. Message numbers may change with IMAP every time before the
prompt is printed if mailx is notified by the server that messages have
been deleted by some other client or process. In this case, `Expunged
n messages' is printed, and message numbers may have changed.
Limitations with POP3 mailboxes are: It is not possible to edit mes-
sages, they can only be copied and deleted. The line count for the
header display is only appropriate if the entire message has been down-
loaded from the server. The status field of a message is maintained by
the server between connections; some servers do not update it at all,
and with a server that does, the `exit' command will not cause the mes-
sage status to be reset. The `newmail' command and the `newmail' vari-
able have no effect. It is not possible to rename or to remove POP3
mailboxes.
If a RUBOUT (interrupt) is typed while an IMAP or POP3 operation is in
progress, mailx will wait until the operation can be safely aborted,
and will then return to the command loop and print the prompt again.
When a second RUBOUT is typed while mailx is waiting for the operation
to complete, the operation itself will be canceled. In this case, data
that has not been fetched yet will have to be fetched before the next
command can be performed. If the canceled operation was using an
SSL/TLS encrypted channel, an error in the SSL transport will very
likely result, and the connection is no longer usable.
As mailx is a mail user agent, it provides only basic SMTP services.
If it fails to contact its upstream SMTP server, it will not make fur-
ther attempts to transfer the message at a later time, and it does not
leave other information about this condition than an error message on
the terminal and a `dead.letter' file. This is usually not a problem
if the SMTP server is located in the same local network as the computer
on which mailx is run. However, care should be taken when using a re-
mote server of an ISP; it might be better to set up a local SMTP server
then which just acts as a proxy.
Mailx immediately contacts the SMTP server (or /usr/lib/sendmail) even
when operating in disconnected mode. It would not make much sense for
mailx to defer outgoing mail since SMTP servers usually provide much
more elaborated delay handling than mailx could perform as a client.
Thus the recommended setup for sending mail in disconnected mode is to
configure a local SMTP server such that it sends outgoing mail as soon
as an external network connection is available again, i.e. to advise it
to do that from a network startup script.
The junk mail filter follows the concepts developed by Paul Graham in
his articles, ``A Plan for Spam'', August 2002,
<http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html>, and ``Better Bayesian Filter-
ing'', January 2003, <http://www.paulgraham.com/better.html>. Chained
tokens are due to a paper by Jonathan A. Zdziarski, ``Advanced Language
Classification using Chained Tokens'', February 2004,
<http://www.nuclearelephant.com/papers/chained.html>.
A mail command appeared in Version 1 AT&T Unix. Berkeley Mail was
written in 1978 by Kurt Shoens. This man page is derived from from The
Mail Reference Manual originally written by Kurt Shoens. Heirloom
Mailx enhancements are maintained and documented by Gunnar Ritter.
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition, Standard for Information Technology
-- Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifica-
tions Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any
discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open
Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the
referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html . Redistribution of this ma-
terial is permitted so long as this notice remains intact.
Heirloom mailx 12.5 10/9/10 MAILX(1)
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