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Home > Help Files > Email > Mail Program
Unix Mail
Using the Mail Program
Jan 22, 2001
The UNIX "mail" program is a general purpose utility for
transmitting information (letters, files, etc.) from one user to
another. It can be used between two users on the same machine, or from
a user on one machine to a user on another machine. It can also send
messages to groups of people, and to files, which can serve as a sort of
"transcript" of what has taken place.
GENERAL USAGE
To send mail to another user, the general form is:
% mail user
Your message goes here
with as many lines as
you need.
<Control-D>
In the above example, "%" is the UNIX prompt, and the name "user"
would be replaced by the name of the account you want to send mail to.
The message goes under it, taking as many lines as you need; be sure to
press return at the end of each line. Finally, the "" means
to hold the "control" or "CTRL" key down and press the "D" key. This
tells "mail" that you are done with your message and you would like it
sent.
A typical message might be something like this:
% mail phil
Phil,
Can you meet me for lunch tomorrow outside of Etcheverry?
Doug
<Control-D>
SENDING MAIL TO USERS ON OTHER MACHINES
The above example works only if "phil" has an account on the
machine you are currently. What would you do if, for example, you
were on Tycho and you wanted to send a message to a friend who has
an account on Newton? Simple -- just type
% mail yourfriend@newton
(pronounced, of course, "yourfriend at Newton"), where "yourfriend"
would be the name of your friend's account on Newton. The mail
program is smart enough to figure out how to get to Newton and
route the mail there.
RECEIVING MAIL
When you log in, if anyone has sent you any mail, the system will
tell you with the message "You have mail." If this is the case, when
you get to the system prompt ("%"), you should type
% mail
with no name after the "mail". This tells mail that you want to read
any messages you may have, and that you don't want to send any right
now. If you were to have three messages, and your name were to be
"phil", you might see something like this:
Mail version 2.18 5/19/83. Type ? for help.
"/usr/spool/mail/phil": 2 messages 2 new
>N 1 me128-al Sat Feb 4 14:55 11/281 "Meet me for lunch"
N 2 root Sat Feb 4 14:56 14/312 "Help files"
N 3 jlapsley Sat Feb 4 14:57 18/543 "Sample message"
The "Mail version 2.18..." line is simply "mail"'s way of telling
you that you are now in "mail". "/usr/spool/mail/phil" is the name
of the file that "phil"'s messages are stored in; the "phil" will be
replaced with your login name. "2 messages 2 new" is "mail" telling
you that you have 2 messages, both of which you have never seen before.
The next three lines are a brief summary of the three messages. The
"N" means that the message to the left of the "N" is "new". The number
to the left of the "N" is the number of the message when you refer to
it with commands (below). Next is the name of the sender, the date
the letter was received, the size in lines and characters (11/281 means
11 lines, 281 characters), and the subject of the message, if any,
in quotes.
Finally, you will be at the command level of the "mail" program; you
can tell this by its prompt, which is an ampersand (&) with the cursor
to the right of it.
IF YOU HAVE NO MAIL
As a special case, you may sometimes type "mail" from the shell and
be informed that you have no mail by the following message:
Mail version 2.18 5/19/83. Type ? for help.
"/usr/spool/mail/phil": 0 messages
No mail
You will then be put back at the command level of the shell, with
the "%" prompt.
READING A MESSAGE
To read a message from the mail program's prompt, simply type in
the message number. For example, to see message number 2, you would say
2
REPLYING TO A MESSAGE
Once you are finished reading a message, there are several things
you can do with it. First, you can "reply" to it, which simple shoots
off a response to whoever sent the message to you. The "mail" program
will tell you who the message is being sent to, and make the subject
"Re:" followed by whatever the old subject of the message was. For
example, if I had a message from "fred", with a subject "Lunch
tomorrow?", if I replied to the message, I would see "mail" print the
following:
To: fred
Subject: Re: Lunch tomorrow?
and I would then be able to type a response and press <Control-D>
when finished.
DELETING A MESSAGE
After you have replied to the message, or even if you haven't
replied to it, you can "delete" it from your mailbox. You can do this
by typing "d" followed by a space and the message number (e.g., "d 1"),
or by just typing "d" and hitting return, which tells "mail" that you
want to delete the last message you did anything with.
UNDELETING A MESSAGE
If you realize that you didn't want to delete that message, and that
you'd like it back, "mail" is forgiving. Just type "undelete" (or
just "u") followed by a space and the message number (e.g., "u 3").
This will restore the previously deleted message in question. Like all
commands, just typing "u" and hitting return will un-delete the last
message you did anything with.
IGNORING A MESSAGE
If you would just like to ignore a message, you can simply press
return without any command, which tells "mail" to display the next
message.
SAVING A MESSAGE
If you would like to save a copy of a message in a file before
deleting it from "mail", you can use the "save" or "write" command
to save it. The format is "write", followed by a space and a message
number, followed by a space and the name of the file you want it
written to. If you don't specify a message number, if assumes
that you are referring to the message you last accessed. That is,
write 1 fred.txt
(or)
save 7 foobar
(or)
write frobbage
(which writes the current message to the file "frobbage")
The difference between "write" and "save" is that "write" removes
some of the header information (i.e., "Date:", "Received-By", etc.),
while "save" saves the message verbatim.
SENDING MAIL FROM INSIDE THE MAIL PROGRAM
When you are at "mail"'s prompt (&), you can type "mail" (or just
"m") followed by a space and a login-name of a user you want to send
mail to. After that, it's just like you typed "mail user" from the
shell (i.e., the "%" prompt), and you should follow up with your message
and a <Control-D>. When you have finished sending the message, you will
be dropped back to the "mail" program's prompt.
SEEING WHAT'S LEFT
After you have deleted several messages, it often is nice to see
what is left. This can be accomplished by the "header" (or "h")
command, which shows the initial brief information for the remaining
letters. Actually, "mail" knows what message number you are on, and
will only show you the headers of messages within a certain "distance"
of your position. For example, if you have 50 messages, and you are
currently at message number 10 (i.e, that was the last message you did
anything with), if you type "he", you would only see a few messages
past number 10, and certainly not all 40 others.
PRESERVING MESSAGES
Messages that you have read but not deleted are automatically
stored in the "mbox" file in your home directory. To prevent a
message from being moved to the "mbox" file, you can type
pre
QUITTING
When you are finished with the "mail" program, and you have read or
replied to all your messages, you can type "q" to exit back to the
shell. Any messages you have "d"eleted will be gone permanently at
this point, and the "undelete" command won't be able to bring them
back. Messages which you have read but not deleted will be stored in a
file "mbox" in your home directory. Messages which you have not looked
at will be preserved until the next time you type "mail".
QUITTING WITHOUT CHANGING MESSAGE STATUS
If you want to quit the "mail" program without it deleting the
messages you deleted, moving the message you read to your "mbox",
you can type "x".
MORE HELP
This document should have given you a *very* basic knowledge of the
"mail" program. If you are in "mail" and want more help, you can just
type "?" for a refresher list of commands, some of which have not be
explained in this document.
For more information on some of the more "tricky" aspects of the
"mail" program, you can examine some of the following help files. To
get help on the subject listed on the right, type the command on the
left:
Command Subject
---------------- -----------------------------
help mail alias How to avoid typing long login-
names and send mail to groups of
people under one name.
help mail forward How to have your mail automatically
forwarded to another address.
help mail mailrc How to install a ".mailrc" file in
your home directory to tell
"mail" to do or not do certain
things automatically.
help mail networks How to send mail to people on
other machines at Berkeley.
help mail tilde How to use the tilde (~) commands
when sending mail, which allow
editing mmessages, setting
subjects, etc.
THE MANUAL
For a very comprehensive and well written explanation of "mail",
covering all its useful and useless options, you might want to pick up a
copy of the "Mail Reference Manual" by Kurt Shoens, available from the
Computing Services Library, 218 Evans Hall.
IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS
If you have any specific questions, please mail them to the account
"help". That is (and you should know how to do this by now):
% mail help
Your questions
<Control-D>
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