40.11 Send Yourself Reminder Mail

I use the at command ( 40.7 ) to send myself reminders. The at job runs a mail program ( 1.33 ) and feeds the body of the message to the mailer's standard input. Examples:

1. To send a one-line reminder, I use a one-line command like this:

   % 
   
   at 0427 tuesday
   
   
   at> 
   
   echo "send summary to Tim today" | mail jpeek@jpeek.com
   
   
   at> 
   [CTRL-d]
   
   %

   It sends mail at (in this case) 4:27 a.m. on the next Tuesday. The mail says: "send summary to Tim today."

2. To send more than one line, you can use a temporary file:

   % 
   
   vi msgfile
   
   
      
   ...put message body in msgfile
   ...
   % 
   
   at 0808 feb 28
   
   
   at> 
   
   mail jpeek@jpeek.com < msgfile
   
   
   at> 
   
   rm msgfile
   
   
   at> 
   [CTRL-d]
   
   %

3. Combine the output of UNIX commands and text with backquotes ( 9.16 ) and a here document ( 8.18 ) :

   % 
   
   at 0115
   
   
   at> 
   
   mail -s "Hard-working people" tom << END
   
   
   at> 
   
   These employees are working late. They deserve a bonus:
   
   
   at> 
   
   `w`
   
   
   at> 
   
   END
   
   
   at> 
   [CTRL-d]
   
   %

   That sends a message to tom at 1:15 a.m. tonight. (This mailer accepts a subject on the command line with its -s option. The output of the w command gives detailed information about logged-in users; not all systems have it.) Unless you understand how to quote here-document text ( 45.26 ) , the message shouldn't have anything but letters, numbers, commas, and periods.

If your system administrator has set up the calendar ( 48.4 ) program, it's good for easy one-line reminders on particular days. If your UNIX has personal crontabs ( 40.12 ) that can send periodic reminders every Tuesday, every hour, or whatever: use the commands in items 1 or 2 above.