Sometimes it is desirable for vacation to use a database file different from its default of .vacation.db. Perhaps you want to keep all your vacation files in one directory—say, .vacation. If your message file were there and your database file were there, you might invoke vacation like this:

|"/usr/ucb/vacation -f .vacation/data.db -m .vacation/message you"

The -f command-line switch causes vacation to use a database different from its default. Only one -f can be specified. If you attempt to specify more than one database with multiple -f command-line switches, only the last one listed will be used.