mailx.1 (2010 09)

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mailx(1) mailx(1)

NAME

mailx - interactive mail message processing system

SYNOPSIS

Send mode

mailx [-FUm][-s

subject ][-r address ][-h number] address ...

Receive mode

mailx -e

mailx [-UHLiNn][-u

user]

mailx -f [-UHLiNn][ﬁlename ]

Obsolescent

mailx [-f ﬁlename ][

-UHLiNn]

DESCRIPTION

mailx provides a comfortable, ﬂexible environment for sending and receiving messages electronically.

When reading mail, mailx provides commands to facilitate saving, deleting, and responding to mes-

sages. When sending mail, mailx allows editing, reviewing and other modiﬁcation of the message as it

is created.

Incoming mail for each user is stored in a standard ﬁle called the system mailbox for that user. When

using

mailx to read messages, the system mailbox is used unless an alternate mailbox ﬁle is speciﬁed by

using the -f option with or without a speciﬁc ﬁlename. As incoming messages are read from the system

mailbox, they are marked to be moved to a secondary ﬁle for storage (unless speciﬁc action is taken) so

that the messages need not be seen again. This secondary ﬁle is called the mbox and is usually located in

the user’s HOME directory (see MBOX in the Environment Variables subsection for a description of this ﬁle

and other environment variables used by

mailx). Messages remain in this ﬁle until speciﬁcally

removed.

Command-line options start with a hyphen (

-), and any other arguments are assumed to be destinations

(recipients).

Arguments containing multiple words must be enclosed in quotes.

If no recipients are speciﬁed,

mailx attempts to read messages from the system mailbox.

Recipient addresses speciﬁed on the command line must total less than 1024 characters in length. You

may declare an

alias or group (see the COMMANDS section) to specify a recipient address or list of

addresses of up to 8191 characters, and use that alias or group name (though each address in the list

must still be less than 1024 characters). If you wish to specify a list of recipient addresses of greater

length than this, have your system administrator declare an alias or group in the system alias ﬁle

/etc/mail/aliases

and use that alias name instead.

Options

mailx recognizes the following command-line options:

-e Test for presence of mail. mailx prints nothing and exits with a successful return

code if there is mail to read. Sometimes used in login scripts such as

$HOME/.profile to check for mail during login.

-f filename Read messages from ﬁlename instead of from the user’s system mailbox. If ﬁlename

is not speciﬁed, the secondary mbox is used.

Note: When using the

-f ﬁlename option in mailx, do not specify a system mail-

box (for example, /var/mail/user) as the ﬁlename. According to the mailx

standards, the -f option cannot be used to read the system mailbox messages. The

behavior of mailx in this circumstance is undeﬁned.

The behavior of

mailx is also undeﬁned in these circumstances:

• When the

-f and -u options are used together in the command line.

• When the

-f or -u option is used multiple times in the command line.

-F Record the message in a ﬁle named after the ﬁrst recipient. Overrides the record

environment variable, if set.

HP-UX 11i Version 3: September 2010 − 1 − Hewlett-Packard Company 1

Summary of content (12 pages)

PAGE 1
mailx(1) mailx(1) NAME mailx - interactive mail message processing system SYNOPSIS Send mode mailx [-FUm] [-s subject ] [-r address ] [-h number] address ... Receive mode mailx -e mailx [-UHLiNn] [-u user ] mailx -f [-UHLiNn] [filename ] Obsolescent mailx [-f filename ] [-UHLiNn] DESCRIPTION mailx provides a comfortable, flexible environment for sending and receiving messages electronically. When reading mail, mailx provides commands to facilitate saving, deleting, and responding to messages.
PAGE 2
mailx(1) mailx(1) -h number The number of network "hops" made so far. This is provided for network software to prevent infinite delivery loops. -H Print header summary only. -L Print complete header information only. -i Ignore interrupts. Also see the description of the ignore environment below. -n Do not initialize from the system default mailx.rc file. -m Do not add MIME header lines Mime Version, Content Type & Content Encoding to the header information while sending mails.
PAGE 3
mailx(1) mailx(1) $ The last message. * All messages. n -m An inclusive range of message numbers, n through m, where n is less than m. user All messages from user . /string All messages with string in the subject line (uppercase-lowercase differences are ignored).
PAGE 4
mailx(1) mailx(1) ignore [header-field ...] Suppresses printing of the specified header fields when displaying messages on the screen. Examples of header fields to ignore are "status" and "cc." The fields are included when the message is saved. The Print and Type commands override this command. dp[msglist] dt[msglist] Delete the specified messages from the mailbox and print the next message after the last one deleted. Roughly equivalent to a delete command followed by a print command. echo string ...
PAGE 5
mailx(1) mailx(1) ignore header-field ... discard header-field ... Suppresses printing of the specified header fields when displaying messages on the screen. Examples of header fields to ignore are status and cc. All fields are included when the message is saved. The Print and Type commands override this command. list Prints all commands available. No explanation is given. mail name ... Mail a message to the specified users.
PAGE 6
mailx(1) mailx(1) Note: If mailx is invoked with the -f option, the save command performs the same function as the copy command.
PAGE 7
mailx(1) set set name set name=string set name=number mailx(1) Define a variable called name. The variable can be given a null, string, or numeric value. Set by itself prints all defined variables and their values (see the Environment Variables subsection for detailed descriptions of the mailx variables). shell Invoke an interactive shell (see SHELL in the Environment Variables subsection). size [msglist] Print the size in characters of the specified messages.
PAGE 8
mailx(1) A mA mailx(1) ˜A Insert the autograph string Sign into the message (see the Environment Variables subsection). ˜a Insert the autograph string sign into the message (see the Environment Variables subsection). ˜b name ... Add name to the blind carbon copy (Bcc) list. ˜c name ... Add name to the carbon copy (Cc) list. ˜d Read in the dead.letter file. See DEAD (in the Environment Variables subsection) for a description of this file. ˜e Invoke the editor on the partial message.
PAGE 9
mailx(1) mailx(1) autoprint Enable automatic printing of messages after delete and undelete commands. Default is noautoprint. bang Enable special-case treatment of exclamation points (!) in shell escape command lines as in vi. Default is nobang. charset=charset Set the default character set. If none is specified, mailx will attempt to use the value of LANG to look up the system default for the user’s locale. If that is unsuccessful, the default value of us-ascii will be used.
PAGE 10
mailx(1) mailx(1) mimeheader=value To add or disable MIME header when sending mail. value can be yes or no. LISTER=command The command (and options) to use when listing contents of the folder directory. The default is ls. NOMETAMAIL=value To disable the usage of metamail to read MIME messages, set the value to TRUE. By default the NOMETAMAIL variable is not set.
PAGE 11
mailx(1) mailx(1) MAIL The name of the initial mailbox file to be read. By default, the mailbox is set to /var/mail/username. This environment variable overrides the default setting and causes mailx to open the mailbox specified by the environment variable. MAILRC The name of the mailer start-up file. Default is $HOME/.mailrc. LC_COLLATE LC_CTYPE LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE influence mailx when the command interpreter (see the SHELL environment variable) is invoked.
PAGE 12
(Notes) A (Notes) mA 12 Hewlett-Packard Company −1− HP-UX 11i Version 3: September 2010