mail,
mailx,
Mail —
send
and receive mail
| mail |
[-dEIinv]
[-a header]
[-b bcc-addr]
[-c cc-addr]
[-r from-addr]
[-s subject]
[--] to-addr
...
|
| mail |
[-dEIiNnv]
-f
[file] |
| mail |
[-dEIiNnv]
[-u
user] |
mail is an intelligent mail processing system which
has a command syntax reminiscent of
ed(1) with
lines replaced by messages.
The options are as follows:
- -a
- Specify additional header fields on the command line such
as "X-Loop: foo@bar" etc. It can be also used to override MIME
headers mail adds by default to each outgoing
mail, see
Character sets
and MIME below. You have to use quotes if the string contains spaces.
This argument may be specified more than once, the headers will then be
concatenated.
-
-b
bcc-addr
- Send blind carbon copies to
bcc-addr.
-
-c
cc-addr
- Send carbon copies to list of users.
cc-addr should be a comma separated list
of names.
- -d
- Causes mail to output all
sorts of information useful for debugging
mail.
- -E
- Don't send messages with an empty body.
- -f
- Use an alternate mailbox. Defaults to the user's
mbox if no
file is specified. When quit,
mail writes undeleted messages back to this
file.
- -I
- Forces mail to run in
interactive mode, even when input is not a terminal. In particular, the
special ~ command character, used when
sending mail, is only available interactively.
- -i
- Ignore tty interrupt signals. This is particularly useful
when using mail on noisy phone lines.
- -N
- Inhibits initial display of message headers when reading
mail or editing a mail folder.
- -n
- Inhibits reading /etc/mail.rc
upon startup.
-
-r
from-addr
- Use from-addr as the from
address in the message and envelope. Overrides any
from options in the startup files.
-
-s
subject
- Specify subject on command line (only the first argument
after the -s flag is used as a subject; be
careful to quote subjects containing spaces).
-
-u
user
- Equivalent to:
$ mail -f /var/mail/user
except that locking is done.
- -v
- Verbose mode. The details of delivery are displayed on the
user's terminal.
- --
- End of options. Any further argument is treated as a direct
receipient address.
Note: For security reasons the
-- separator is strongly recommended for
scripts that need to send mails to addresses obtained from untrusted
sources (such as web forms).
At startup time,
mail will execute commands in the
system command file,
/etc/mail.rc, unless
explicitly told not to by using the
-n option.
Next, the commands in the user's personal command file
~/.mailrc are executed.
mail then examines its command line options to
determine whether the user requested a new message to be sent or existing
messages in a mailbox to be examined.
To send a message to one or more people,
mail can
be invoked with arguments which are the names of people to whom the mail will
be sent. You are then expected to type in your message, followed by a
control-D (‘^D’) at the beginning of a line. The section below,
Replying to
or originating mail, describes some features of
mail available to help you compose your letter.
In normal usage,
mail is given no arguments and
checks your mail out of the post office, then prints out a one line header of
each message found. The current message is initially set to the first message
(numbered 1) and can be printed using the
print
command (which can be abbreviated
p). Moving
among the messages is much like moving between lines in
ed(1); you may use
+
and
- to shift forwards and backwards, or simply
enter a message number to move directly.
After examining a message, you can
delete
(
d) or
reply
(
r) to it. Deletion causes the
mail program to forget about the message. This is
not irreversible; the message can be
undeleted
(
u) by giving its number, or the
mail session can be aborted by giving the
exit (
x) command.
Deleted messages, however, will usually disappear, never to be seen again.
Commands such as
print and
delete can be given a list of message numbers as
arguments to apply to a number of messages at once. Thus
delete 1 2 deletes messages 1 and 2, while
delete 1-5 deletes messages 1 through 5.
Messages may also be selected using one of the following categories:
- *
- all messages
- $
- last message
- :d
- deleted messages
- :n
- new messages
- :o
- old messages
- :r
- read messages
- :u
- unread messages
Thus the command
top, which prints the first few
lines of a message, could be used in
top * to
print the first few lines of all messages.
You can use the
reply command to set up a response
to a message, sending it back to the person who it was from. Text you then
type in, up to an end-of-file, defines the contents of the message. While you
are composing a message,
mail treats lines
beginning with the tilde (‘~’) character specially. For
instance, typing
~m (alone on a line) will place
a copy of the current message into the response, right shifting it by a single
tab-stop (see the
indentprefix variable,
below). Other escapes will set up subject fields, add and delete recipients to
the message, and allow you to escape to an editor to revise the message or to
a shell to run some commands. (These options are given in the summary below.)
You can end a
mail session with the
quit (
q) command.
Messages which have been examined go to your
mbox file unless they have been deleted, in
which case they are discarded. Unexamined messages go back to the post office
(see the
-f option above).
It is also possible to create personal distribution lists so that, for instance,
you can send mail to “
cohorts” and have
it go to a group of people. Such lists can be defined by placing a line like
alias cohorts bill ozalp jkf mark
kridle@ucbcory
in the file
.mailrc in your home directory. The
current list of such aliases can be displayed with the
alias command in
mail. System wide distribution lists can be
created by editing
/etc/aliases, (see
aliases(5)); these are kept in a different
syntax. In mail you send, personal aliases will be expanded in mail sent to
others so that they will be able to
reply to the
recipients. System wide aliases are not expanded when the mail is sent, but
any reply returned to the machine will have the system wide alias expanded as
all mail goes through an MTA.
Recipient addresses (any of the “To”, “Cc” or
“Bcc” header fields) are subject to expansion when the
expandaddr option is set.
An address may be expanded as follows:
- An address that starts with a pipe
(‘
|’) character is treated as a
command to run. The command immediately following the
‘|’ is executed with the message as
its standard input.
- An address that starts with a
‘
+’ character is treated as a
folder.
- An address that contains a
‘
/’ character but no
‘!’,
‘%’, or
‘@’ characters is also treated as a
folder.
- If none of the above apply, the recipient is treated as
a local or network mail address.
If the
expandaddr option is not set (the default),
no expansion is performed and the recipient is treated as a local or network
mail address.
Generally
mail does not handle neither different
character sets nor any other MIME feature. Especially it does not perform any
any conversions between character sets while displaying or sending mails.
Starting from April 2017, however, as a Debian extension this version of
mail adds a few MIME headers to every outgoing
mail in order to indicate that the mail is sent as 8-bit plain text data that
uses character set encoding detected from the current
locale(7) settings. The
-a command-line option can be used to override
those headers, for example:
$ mail -a 'Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="ISO-8859-1"'
sets header indicating legacy character encoding.
(Adapted from the “Mail Reference Manual”.)
Each command is typed on a line by itself, and may take arguments following the
command word. The command need not be typed in its entirety — the first
command which matches the typed prefix is used. For commands which take
message lists as arguments, if no message list is given, then the next message
forward which satisfies the command's requirements is used. If there are no
messages forward of the current message, the search proceeds backwards, and if
there are no good messages at all,
mail types
“No applicable messages” and aborts the command.
- -
- Print out the preceding message. If given a numeric
argument n, goes to the
nth previous message and prints it.
- =
- Prints the currently selected message number.
- ?
- Prints a brief summary of commands.
- !
- Executes the shell (see sh(1)
and csh(1)) command which follows.
- alias
- (a) With no arguments, prints
out all currently defined aliases. With one argument, prints out that
alias. With more than one argument, creates a new alias or changes an old
one.
- alternates
- (alt) The
alternates command is useful if you have
accounts on several machines. It can be used to inform
mail that the listed addresses are really
you. When you reply to messages,
mail will not send a copy of the message to
any of the addresses listed on the alternates
list. If the alternates command is given with
no argument, the current set of alternate names is displayed.
- chdir
- (cd or
ch) Changes the user's working directory to
that specified, if given. If no directory is given, then changes to the
user's login directory.
- copy
- (c) The
copy command does the same thing that
save does, except that it does not mark the
messages it is used on for deletion when you quit.
- delete
- (d) Takes a list of messages
as argument and marks them all as deleted. Deleted messages will not be
saved in mbox, nor will they be available
for most other commands.
- dp
- (also dt) Deletes the current
message and prints the next message. If there is no next message,
mail says “
No more
messages.”
- edit
- (e) Takes a list of messages
and points the text editor at each one in turn. On return from the editor,
the message is read back in.
- exit
- (ex or
x) Effects an immediate return to the shell
without modifying the user's system mailbox,
mbox file, or edit file in
-f.
- file
- (fi) The same as
folder.
- folder
- (fo) The
folder command switches to a new mail file or
folder. With no arguments, it tells you which file you are currently
reading. If you give it an argument, it will write out changes (such as
deletions) you have made in the current file and read in the new file.
Some special conventions are recognized for the name. # means the previous
file, % means your system mailbox, %user means user's system mailbox,
& means your mbox file, and +folder
means a file in your folder directory.
- folders
- List the names of the folders in your folder
directory.
- from
- (f) Takes a list of messages
and prints their message headers.
- (h) Lists the current
windowful of headers. To view the next or previous group of headers, see
the z command.
- help
- A synonym for ?.
- hold
- (ho, also
preserve) Takes a message list and marks each
message therein to be saved in the user's system mailbox instead of in
mbox. Does not override the
delete command.
- ignore
- Add the list of header fields named to the
ignored list. Header fields in the ignore
list are not printed on your terminal when you print a message. This
command is very handy for suppression of certain machine-generated header
fields. The Type and
Print commands can be used to print a message
in its entirety, including ignored fields. If
ignore is executed with no arguments, it
lists the current set of ignored fields.
- inc
- Incorporate any new messages that have arrived while mail
is being read. The new messages are added to the end of the message list,
and the current message is reset to be the first new mail message. This
does not renumber the existing message list, nor does it cause any changes
made so far to be saved.
- list
- (l) List the valid
mail commands.
- mail
- (m) Takes as argument login
names and distribution group names and sends mail to those people.
- mbox
- Indicate that a list of messages be sent to
mbox in your home directory when you
quit. This is the default action for messages if you do
not have the
hold option set.
- more
- (mo) Takes a message list and
invokes the pager on that list.
- next
- (n) (like
+ or CR) Goes to the next message in sequence
and types it. With an argument list, types the next matching message.
- preserve
- (pre) A synonym for
hold.
- Print
- (P) Like
print but also prints out ignored header
fields. See also print,
ignore, and
retain.
- print
- (p) Takes a message list and
types out each message on the user's terminal.
- quit
- (q) Terminates the session,
saving all undeleted, unsaved messages in the
mbox file in the user's login directory,
preserving all messages marked with hold or
preserve or never referenced in the user's
system mailbox, and removing all other messages from the user's system
mailbox. If new mail has arrived during the session, the message
“
You have new mail” is given. If
given while editing a mailbox file with the
-f flag, then the edit file is rewritten. A
return to the shell is effected, unless the rewrite of edit file fails, in
which case the user can escape with the exit
command.
- Reply
- (R) Reply to originator. Does
not reply to other recipients of the original message.
- reply
- (r) Takes a message list and
sends mail to the sender and all recipients of the specified message. The
default message must not be deleted.
- respond
- A synonym for reply.
- retain
- Add the list of header fields named to the
retained list. Only the header fields in
the retain list are shown on your terminal when you print a message. All
other header fields are suppressed. The Type
and Print commands can be used to print a
message in its entirety. If retain is
executed with no arguments, it lists the current set of retained
fields.
- save
- (s) Takes a message list and a
filename and appends each message in turn to the end of the file. The
filename in quotes, followed by the line count and character count is
echoed on the user's terminal.
- saveignore
-
saveignore
is to save what
ignore is to
print and type.
Header fields thus marked are filtered out when saving a message by
save or when automatically saving to
mbox.
- saveretain
-
saveretain
is to save what
retain is to
print and type.
Header fields thus marked are the only ones saved with a message when
saving by save or when automatically saving
to mbox.
saveretain overrides
saveignore.
- set
- (se) With no arguments, prints
all variable values. Otherwise, sets option. Arguments are of the form
option=value (no space before or after =)
or option. Quotation marks may be placed
around any part of the assignment statement to quote blanks or tabs, i.e.,
set indentprefix="->".
- shell
- (sh) Invokes an interactive
version of the shell.
- size
- Takes a message list and prints out the size in characters
of each message.
- source
- The source command reads
commands from a file.
- top
- Takes a message list and prints the top few lines of each.
The number of lines printed is controlled by the variable
toplines and defaults to five.
- Type
- (T) Identical to the
Print command.
- type
- (t) A synonym for
print.
- unalias
- Takes a list of names defined by
alias commands and discards the remembered
groups of users. The group names no longer have any significance.
- undelete
- (u) Takes a message list and
marks each message as not being deleted.
- unread
- (U) Takes a message list and
marks each message as not having been read.
- unset
- Takes a list of option names and discards their remembered
values; the inverse of set.
- visual
- (v) Takes a message list and
invokes the display editor on each message.
- write
- (w) Similar to
save, except that
only the message body (without the header) is
saved. Extremely useful for such tasks as sending and receiving source
program text over the message system.
- xit
- (x) A synonym for
exit.
- z
-
mail presents message headers
in windowfuls as described under the headers
command. You can move mail's attention
forward to the next window with the z
command. Also, you can move to the previous window by using
z-.
Here is a summary of the tilde escapes, which are used when composing messages
to perform special functions. Tilde escapes are only recognized at the
beginning of lines. The name “tilde escape” is somewhat of a
misnomer since the actual escape character can be set by the option
escape.
-
~bname
...
- Add the given names to the list of carbon copy recipients
but do not make the names visible in the Cc: line ("blind"
carbon copy).
-
~cname
...
- Add the given names to the list of carbon copy recipients.
- ~d
- Read the file dead.letter from
your home directory into the message.
- ~e
- Invoke the text editor on the message collected so far.
After the editing session is finished, you may continue appending text to
the message.
-
~Fmessages
- Identical to ~f, except all
message headers are included.
-
~fmessages
- Read the named messages into the message being sent. If no
messages are specified, read in the current message. Message headers
currently being ignored (by the ignore or
retain command) are not included.
- ~h
- Edit the message header fields by typing each one in turn
and allowing the user to append text to the end or modify the field by
using the current terminal erase and kill characters.
-
~Mmessages
- Identical to ~m, except all
message headers are included.
-
~mmessages
- Read the named messages into the message being sent,
indented by a tab or by the value of
indentprefix. If no messages are
specified, read the current message. Message headers currently being
ignored (by the ignore or
retain command) are not included.
- ~p
- Print out the message collected so far, prefaced by the
message header fields.
- ~q
- Abort the message being sent, copying the message to
dead.letter in your home directory if
save is set.
-
~Rstring
- Use string as the Reply-To
field.
-
~rfilename
-
-
~<filename
- Read the named file into the message.
-
~sstring
- Cause the named string to become the current subject field.
-
~tname
...
- Add the given names to the direct recipient list.
- ~v
- Invoke an alternate editor (defined by the
VISUAL option) on the message collected
so far. Usually, the alternate editor will be a screen editor. After you
quit the editor, you may resume appending text to the end of your message.
-
~wfilename
- Write the message onto the named file.
- ~x
- Abort the message being sent. No message is copied to
~/dead.letter, even if
save is set.
- ~?
- Prints a brief summary of tilde escapes.
-
~!command
- Execute the indicated shell command, then return to the
message.
-
~|command
- Pipe the message through the command as a filter. If the
command gives no output or terminates abnormally, retain the original text
of the message. The command fmt(1) is often
used as command to rejustify the message.
-
~:mail-command
-
-
~_mail-command
- Execute the given mail command. Not all commands, however,
are allowed.
-
~~string
- Insert the string of text in the message prefaced by a
single ~. If you have changed the escape character, then you should double
that character in order to send it.
- ~.
- Simulate end of file on input.
A number of options can be set in the
.mailrc file
to alter the behavior of
mail, controlled via the
set and
unset
commands. Options may be either binary, in which case it is only significant
to see whether they are set or not; or string, in which case the actual value
is of interest. The binary options include the following:
- append
- Causes messages saved in
mbox to be appended to the end rather
than prepended. This should always be set (perhaps in
/etc/mail.rc).
-
ask,
asksub
- Causes mail to prompt you for
the subject of each message you send. If you respond with simply a
newline, no subject field will be sent.
- askbcc
- Causes you to be prompted for additional blind carbon copy
recipients at the end of each message. Responding with a newline indicates
your satisfaction with the current list.
- askcc
- Causes you to be prompted for additional carbon copy
recipients at the end of each message. Responding with a newline indicates
your satisfaction with the current list.
- autoinc
- Causes new mail to be automatically incorporated when it
arrives. Setting this is similar to issuing the
inc command at each prompt, except that the
current message is not reset when new mail arrives.
- autoprint
- Causes the delete command to
behave like dp; thus, after deleting a
message, the next one will be typed automatically.
- debug
- Setting the binary option
debug is the same as specifying
-d on the command line and causes
mail to output all sorts of information
useful for debugging mail.
- dot
- The binary option dot
causes mail to interpret a period alone on a
line as the terminator of a message you are sending.
- expandaddr
- Causes mail to expand message
recipient addresses, as explained in the section
Recipient
address specifications.
- from
- Causes mail to use the
specified sender address in the “From:” field of the message
header. A stripped down version of the address is also used in the message
envelope. If unset, the message will not include an explicit sender
address and a default value will be added by the MTA, typically
“user@host”. This value can be overridden by specifying the
-r flag on the command line.
- hold
- This option is used to hold messages in the system mailbox
by default.
- ignore
- Causes interrupt signals from your terminal to be ignored
and echoed as @'s.
- ignoreeof
- An option related to dot
is ignoreeof which makes
mail refuse to accept a control-D as the end
of a message. ignoreeof also applies to
mail command mode.
- keep
- Setting this option causes
mail to truncate your system mailbox instead
of deleting it when it's empty.
- keepsave
- Messages saved with the save
command are not normally saved in mbox at
quit time. Use this option to retain those messages.
- metoo
- Usually, when a group is expanded that contains the sender,
the sender is removed from the expansion. Setting this option causes the
sender to be included in the group.
- noheader
- Setting the option
noheader is the same as giving the
-N flag on the command line.
- nosave
- Normally, when you abort a message with two interrupt
characters (usually control-C), mail copies
the partial letter to the file dead.letter in
your home directory. Setting the binary option
nosave prevents this.
- quiet
- Suppresses the printing of the version when first
invoked.
- Replyall
- Reverses the sense of reply
and Reply commands.
- searchheaders
- If this option is set, then a message-list specifier in the
form “/x:y” will expand to all messages containing the
substring ‘y’ in the header field ‘x’. The
string search is case insensitive. If ‘x’ is omitted, it
will default to the “Subject” header field. The form
“/to:y” is a special case, and will expand to all messages
containing the substring ‘y’ in the “To”,
“Cc” or “Bcc” header fields. The check for
“to” is case sensitive, so that “/To:y” can be
used to limit the search for ‘y’ to just the
“To:” field.
- skipempty
- Don't send messages with an empty body.
- verbose
- Setting the option verbose
is the same as using the -v flag on the
command line. When mail runs in verbose mode,
the actual delivery of messages is displayed on the user's terminal.
EDITOR- Pathname of the text editor to use in the
edit command and
~e escape. If not defined,
/usr/bin/ex is used.
LISTER- Pathname of the directory lister to use in the
folders command. Default is
/bin/ls.
MBOX- The name of the mbox file.
It can be the name of a folder. The default is
“
mbox” in the user's home
directory.
- Pathname of the program to use in the
more command or when the
crt variable is set. The default
paginator more(1) is used if this option is
not defined.
REPLYTO- If set, will be used to initialize the Reply-To field for
outgoing messages.
SHELL- Pathname of the shell to use in the
! command and the
~! escape. A default shell is used if this
option is not defined.
VISUAL- Pathname of the text editor to use in the
visual command and
~v escape. If not defined,
/usr/bin/vi is used.
- crt
- The valued option crt is
used as a threshold to determine how long a message must be before
PAGER is used to read it. If
crt is set without a value, then the
height of the terminal screen stored in the system is used to compute the
threshold (see stty(1)).
- escape
- If defined, the first character of this option gives the
character to use in the place of ~ to denote escapes.
- folder
- The name of the directory to use for storing folders of
messages. If this name begins with a
‘
/’,
mail considers it to be an absolute pathname;
otherwise, the folder directory is found relative to your home
directory.
- indentprefix
- String used by the ~m tilde
escape for indenting messages, in place of the normal tab character
(‘^I’). Be sure to quote the value if it contains spaces or
tabs.
- record
- If defined, gives the pathname of the file used to record
all outgoing mail. If not defined, then outgoing mail is not so
saved.
- screen
- Size of window of message headers for
z.
- sendmail
- Pathname to an alternative mail delivery system.
- toplines
- If defined, gives the number of lines of a message to be
printed out with the top command; normally,
the first five lines are printed.
mail utilizes the
HOME,
LOGNAME,
USER,
SHELL,
DEAD,
PAGER,
LISTER,
EDITOR,
VISUAL,
REPLYTO,
MAIL,
MAILRC, and
MBOX environment variables.
If the
MAIL environment variable is set, its
value is used as the path to the user's mail spool.
- /var/mail/*
- post office (unless overridden by the
MAIL environment variable)
- ~/mbox
- user's old mail
- ~/.mailrc
- file giving initial mail commands; can be overridden by
setting the
MAILRC environment
variable
- /tmp/R*
- temporary files
- /usr/share/bsd-mailx/mail.*help
- help files
- /etc/mail.rc
- system initialization file
The
mail utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
fmt(1),
newaliases(1),
vacation(1),
aliases(5),
mail.local(8),
newaliases(8),
sendmail(8),
smtpd(8)
Kurt Shoens,
Mail Reference Manual, 4.4BSD User's
Supplementary Documents (USD).
The
mailx utility is compliant with the
IEEE Std 1003.1-2008
(“POSIX.1”) specification.
The flags [
-iNnu] are
marked by
IEEE Std 1003.1-2008
(“POSIX.1”) as being optional.
The flags [
-eFH] are marked
by
IEEE Std 1003.1-2008
(“POSIX.1”) as being optional, and are not supported by
this implementation of
mailx.
The flags [
-abcdEIrv] are
extensions to the specification.
A
mail command appeared in
Version 1 AT&T UNIX. This man page is
derived from the
Mail Reference Manual originally
written by Kurt Shoens.
Usually,
Mail and
mailx are just links to
mail, which can be confusing.