NAME
mailfrom — summarize mail folders by subject and sender
SYNOPSIS
mailfrom
[-hnQqStv]
[-s
status]
[folder|username]...
DESCRIPTION
The
mailfrom
command reads one or more mail folders
and outputs one line per message in the form:
where
from
is the name of the person the message is from, and
subject
is the subject of the message, if present.
If
mailfrom
determines that the message is from you, the
from
portion will read
To user,
where
user
is the user the message was sent to.
This happens when you receive a copy of a letter you sent.
The default folder is your incoming mailbox,
/var/mail/yourloginname.
See the Operands subsection below.
Options
mailfrom
recognizes the following options:
- -h
Print a brief help message summarizing the options.
- -n
Number the messages using the same numbering scheme used by
readmail.
- -Q
Very quiet mode.
Only error messages are produced.
This option is useful in shell scripts,
where only the success or failure of the program is important,
and output is not desired.
- -q
Quiet mode.
Output only a one-line summary for each mailbox or folder.
- -S
Add a summary of the number of messages by message status in each
mailbox or folder.
To get the summary only,
use this with the
-q
option.
The summary has the form:
Folder contains:
New messages: n
Unread messages: u
Read messages: r
If an item count,
n,
r,
or
u
is zero, the line is omitted.
- -s status
Only display headers from messages with the given status.
status
can be one of
new,
old,
read,
or
unread.
old
and
unread
are equivalent.
The
-s
option can be repeated to print header information
from more than one category,
for example, only new and unread messages.
The values can be abbreviated to their first letters.
The default is all messages.
- -t
Tidy mode.
If the
from
field is long enough to displace the
subject
field from its normal start column,
move the subject down onto the next line.
- -v
Verbose mode.
Print a descriptive header before listing
the contents of each mailbox or folder.
Operands
mailfrom
recognizes the following optional operands:
- folder|username
A file name or the name of a mail user on your system.
You can use the
=filename
format to specify a folder in your mail directory, defined by the
maildir
string variable in your
elmrc
configuration file.
mailfrom
searches for the value as a file name relative to your current directory.
Then, if the file name is not an absolute path,
it searches for the value relative to the incoming mailbox directory,
/var/mail.
The first file found is selected.
You must have read access to the file.
RETURN VALUE
mailfrom
returns the following values:
- 0
Messages matching
status
are present.
- 1
No messages matching
status
are present, but there are some messages.
- 2
There are no messages at all.
- 3
An error occurred.
If multiple mailboxes or folders are specified,
the exit status only applies to the last one examined.
This can be used in scripts to determine what kind of mail a user has.
EXAMPLES
Display header information from all the messages in your mailbox.
Display header information from all new messages in your mailbox.
Assuming you have the proper file permissions to read
guest's
mail,
print out header information from all new and unread messages in
guest's
incoming mailbox.
mailfrom -s new -s unread guest
Print only a summary of how many new, unread, and read messages
are in your incoming mailbox.
AUTHOR
mailfrom
was developed by HP.
FILES
- $HOME/.elm/elmrc
Your
elm
configuration file.
- /var/mail
Directory of incoming mailboxes.
Printable version
