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1.1 root 1: .\" Copyright (c) 1980 Regents of the University of California.
2: .\" All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement
3: .\" specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
4: .\"
5: .\" @(#)mail4.nr 6.1 (Berkeley) 5/23/86
6: .\"
7: .bp
8: .sh 1 "More about sending mail"
9: .sh 2 "Tilde escapes"
10: .pp
11: While typing in a message to be sent to others, it is often
12: useful to be able to invoke the text editor on the partial message,
13: print the message, execute a shell command, or do some other
14: auxiliary function.
15: .i Mail
16: provides these capabilities through
17: .i "tilde escapes" ,
18: which consist of a tilde (~) at the beginning of a line, followed by
19: a single character which indicates the function to be performed. For
20: example, to print the text of the message so far, use:
21: .(l
22: ~p
23: .)l
24: which will print a line of dashes, the recipients of your message, and
25: the text of the message so far.
26: Since
27: .i Mail
28: requires two consecutive \s-2RUBOUT\s0's to abort a letter, you
29: can use a single \s-2RUBOUT\s0 to abort the output of ~p or any other
30: ~ escape without killing your letter.
31: .pp
32: If you are dissatisfied with the message as
33: it stands, you can invoke the text editor on it using the escape
34: .(l
35: ~e
36: .)l
37: which causes the message to be copied into a temporary file and an
38: instance of the editor to be spawned. After modifying the message to
39: your satisfaction, write it out and quit the editor.
40: .i Mail
41: will respond
42: by typing
43: .(l
44: (continue)
45: .)l
46: after which you may continue typing text which will be appended to your
47: message, or type <control-d> to end the message.
48: A standard text editor is provided by
49: .i Mail .
50: You can override this default by setting the valued option
51: .q EDITOR
52: to something else. For example, you might prefer:
53: .(l
54: set EDITOR=/usr/ucb/ex
55: .)l
56: .pp
57: Many systems offer a screen editor as an alternative to the standard
58: text editor, such as the
59: .i vi
60: editor from UC Berkeley.
61: To use the screen, or
62: .i visual
63: editor, on your current message, you can use the escape,
64: .(l
65: ~v
66: .)l
67: ~v works like ~e, except that the screen editor is invoked instead.
68: A default screen editor is defined by
69: .i Mail .
70: If it does not suit you, you can set the valued option
71: .q VISUAL
72: to the path name of a different editor.
73: .pp
74: It is often useful to be able to include the contents of some
75: file in your message; the escape
76: .(l
77: ~r filename
78: .)l
79: is provided for this purpose, and causes the named file to be appended
80: to your current message.
81: .i Mail
82: complains if the file doesn't exist
83: or can't be read. If the read is successful, the number of lines and
84: characters appended to your message is printed, after which you may continue
85: appending text. The filename may contain shell metacharacters like * and ?
86: which are expanded according to the conventions of your shell.
87: .pp
88: As a special case of ~r, the escape
89: .(l
90: ~d
91: .)l
92: reads in the file
93: .q dead.letter
94: in your home directory. This is often useful since
95: .i Mail
96: copies the text
97: of your message there when you abort a message with \s-2RUBOUT\s0.
98: .pp
99: To save the current text of your message on a file you may use the
100: .(l
101: ~w filename
102: .)l
103: escape.
104: .i Mail
105: will print out the number of lines and characters written
106: to the file, after which you may continue appending text to your message.
107: Shell metacharacters may be used in the filename, as in ~r and are expanded
108: with the conventions of your shell.
109: .pp
110: If you are sending mail from within
111: .i Mail's
112: command mode
113: you can read a message sent to you into the message
114: you are constructing with the escape:
115: .(l
116: ~m 4
117: .)l
118: which will read message 4 into the current message, shifted right by
119: one tab stop. You can name any non-deleted message, or list of messages.
120: Messages can also be forwarded without shifting by a tab stop with ~f.
121: This is the usual way to forward a message.
122: .pp
123: If, in the process of composing a message, you decide to add additional
124: people to the list of message recipients, you can do so with the escape
125: .(l
126: ~t name1 name2 ...
127: .)l
128: You may name as few or many additional recipients as you wish. Note
129: that the users originally on the recipient list will still receive
130: the message; you cannot remove someone from the recipient
131: list with ~t.
132: .pp
133: If you wish, you can associate a subject with your message by using the
134: escape
135: .(l
136: ~s Arbitrary string of text
137: .)l
138: which replaces any previous subject with
139: .q "Arbitrary string of text."
140: The subject, if given, is sent near the
141: top of the message prefixed with
142: .q "Subject:"
143: You can see what the message will look like by using ~p.
144: .pp
145: For political reasons, one occasionally prefers to list certain
146: people as recipients of carbon copies of a message rather than
147: direct recipients. The escape
148: .(l
149: ~c name1 name2 ...
150: .)l
151: adds the named people to the
152: .q "Cc:"
153: list, similar to ~t.
154: Again, you can execute ~p to see what the message will look like.
155: .pp
156: The escape
157: .(l
158: ~b name1 name2 ...
159: .)l
160: adds the named people to the
161: .q "Cc:"
162: list, but does not make the names visible in the
163: .q "Cc:"
164: line ("blind" carbon copy).
165: .pp
166: The recipients of the message together constitute the
167: .q "To:"
168: field, the subject the
169: .q "Subject:"
170: field, and the carbon copies the
171: .q "Cc:"
172: field. If you wish to edit these in ways impossible with the ~t, ~s, ~c
173: and ~b escapes, you can use the escape
174: .(l
175: ~h
176: .)l
177: which prints
178: .q "To:"
179: followed by the current list of recipients and leaves the cursor
180: (or printhead) at the end of the line. If you type in ordinary
181: characters, they are appended to the end of the current list of
182: recipients. You can also use your erase character to erase back into
183: the list of recipients, or your kill character to erase them altogether.
184: Thus, for example, if your erase and kill characters are the standard
185: (on printing terminals) # and @ symbols,
186: .(l
187: ~h
188: To: root kurt####bill
189: .)l
190: would change the initial recipients
191: .q "root kurt"
192: to
193: .q "root bill."
194: When you type a newline,
195: .i Mail
196: advances to the
197: .q "Subject:"
198: field, where the same rules apply. Another newline brings you to
199: the
200: .q "Cc:"
201: field, which may be edited in the same fashion. Another newline
202: brings you to the
203: .q "Bcc:"
204: ("blind" carbon copy) field, which follows the same rules as the "Cc:"
205: field. Another newline
206: leaves you appending text to the end of your message. You can use
207: ~p to print the current text of the header fields and the body
208: of the message.
209: .pp
210: To effect a temporary escape to the shell, the escape
211: .(l
212: ~!command
213: .)l
214: is used, which executes
215: .i command
216: and returns you to mailing mode without altering the text of
217: your message. If you wish, instead, to filter the body of your
218: message through a shell command, then you can use
219: .(l
220: ~|command
221: .)l
222: which pipes your message through the command and uses the output
223: as the new text of your message. If the command produces no output,
224: .i Mail
225: assumes that something is amiss and retains the old version
226: of your message. A frequently-used filter is the command
227: .i fmt ,
228: designed to format outgoing mail.
229: .pp
230: To effect a temporary escape to
231: .i Mail
232: command mode instead, you can use the
233: .(l
234: ~:\fIMail command\fP
235: .)l
236: escape. This is especially useful for retyping the message you are
237: replying to, using, for example:
238: .(l
239: ~:t
240: .)l
241: It is also useful for setting options and modifying aliases.
242: .pp
243: If you wish abort the current message, you can use the escape
244: .(l
245: ~q
246: .)l
247: This will terminate the current message and return you to the
248: shell (or \fIMail\fP if you were using the \fBmail\fP command).
249: If the \fBsave\fP option is set, the message will be copied
250: to the file
251: .q dead.letter
252: in your home directory.
253: .pp
254: If you wish (for some reason) to send a message that contains
255: a line beginning with a tilde, you must double it. Thus, for example,
256: .(l
257: ~~This line begins with a tilde.
258: .)l
259: sends the line
260: .(l
261: ~This line begins with a tilde.
262: .)l
263: .pp
264: Finally, the escape
265: .(l
266: ~?
267: .)l
268: prints out a brief summary of the available tilde escapes.
269: .pp
270: On some terminals (particularly ones with no lower case)
271: tilde's are difficult to type.
272: .i Mail
273: allows you to change the escape character with the
274: .q escape
275: option. For example, I set
276: .(l
277: set escape=]
278: .)l
279: and use a right bracket instead of a tilde. If I ever need to
280: send a line beginning with right bracket, I double it, just as for ~.
281: Changing the escape character removes the special meaning of ~.
282: .sh 2 "Network access"
283: .pp
284: This section describes how to send mail to people on other machines.
285: Recall that sending to a plain login name sends mail to that person
286: on your machine. If your machine is directly (or sometimes, even,
287: indirectly) connected to the Arpanet, you can send messages to people
288: on the Arpanet using a name of the form
289: .(l
290: [email protected]
291: .)l
292: where
293: .i name
294: is the login name of the person you're trying to reach,
295: .i host
296: is the name of the machine on the Arpanet,
297: and
298: .i domain
299: is the higher-level scope within which the hostname is known, e.g. EDU (for educational
300: institutions), COM (for commercial entities), GOV (for governmental agencies),
301: ARPA for many other things, BITNET or CSNET for those networks.
302: .pp
303: If your recipient logs in on a machine connected to yours by
304: UUCP (the Bell Laboratories supplied network that communicates
305: over telephone lines), sending mail can be a bit more complicated.
306: You must know the list of machines through which your message must
307: travel to arrive at his site. So, if his machine is directly connected
308: to yours, you can send mail to him using the syntax:
309: .(l
310: host!name
311: .)l
312: where, again,
313: .i host
314: is the name of the machine and
315: .i name
316: is the login name.
317: If your message must go through an intermediary machine first, you
318: must use the syntax:
319: .(l
320: intermediary!host!name
321: .)l
322: and so on. It is actually a feature of UUCP that the map of all
323: the systems in the network is not known anywhere (except where people
324: decide to write it down for convenience). Talk to your system administrator
325: about good ways to get places; the
326: .i uuname
327: command will tell you systems whose names are recognized, but not which
328: ones are frequently called or well-connected.
329: .pp
330: When you use the
331: .b reply
332: command to respond to a letter, there is a problem of figuring out the
333: names of the users in the
334: .q "To:"
335: and
336: .q "Cc:"
337: lists
338: .i "relative to the current machine" .
339: If the original letter was sent to you by someone on the local machine,
340: then this problem does not exist, but if the message came from a remote
341: machine, the problem must be dealt with.
342: .i Mail
343: uses a heuristic to build the correct name for each user relative
344: to the local machine. So, when you
345: .b reply
346: to remote mail, the names in the
347: .q "To:"
348: and
349: .q "Cc:"
350: lists may change somewhat.
351: .sh 2 "Special recipients"
352: .pp
353: As described previously, you can send mail to either user names or
354: .b alias
355: names. It is also possible to send messages directly to files or to
356: programs, using special conventions. If a recipient name has a
357: `/' in it or begins with a `+', it is assumed to be the
358: path name of a file into which
359: to send the message. If the file already exists, the message is
360: appended to the end of the file. If you want to name a file in
361: your current directory (ie, one for which a `/' would not usually
362: be needed) you can precede the name with `./'
363: So, to send mail to the file
364: .q memo
365: in the current directory, you can give the command:
366: .(l
367: % Mail ./memo
368: .)l
369: If the name begins with a `+,' it is expanded into the full path name
370: of the folder name in your folder directory.
371: This ability to send mail to files can be used for a variety of
372: purposes, such as maintaining a journal and keeping a record of
373: mail sent to a certain group of users. The second example can be
374: done automatically by including the full pathname of the record
375: file in the
376: .b alias
377: command for the group. Using our previous
378: .b alias
379: example, you might give the command:
380: .(l
381: alias project sam sally steve susan /usr/project/mail_record
382: .)l
383: Then, all mail sent to "project" would be saved on the file
384: .q /usr/project/mail_record
385: as well as being sent to the members of the project. This file
386: can be examined using
387: .i "Mail \-f" .
388: .pp
389: It is sometimes useful to send mail directly to a program, for
390: example one might write a project billboard program and want to access
391: it using
392: .i Mail .
393: To send messages to the billboard program, one can send mail
394: to the special name `|billboard' for example.
395: .i Mail
396: treats recipient names that begin with a `|' as a program to send
397: the mail to. An
398: .b alias
399: can be set up to reference a `|' prefaced name if desired.
400: .i Caveats :
401: the shell treats `|' specially, so it must be quoted on the command
402: line. Also, the `| program' must be presented as a single argument to
403: mail. The safest course is to surround the entire name with double
404: quotes. This also applies to usage in the
405: .b alias
406: command. For example, if we wanted to alias `rmsgs' to `rmsgs \-s'
407: we would need to say:
408: .(l
409: alias rmsgs "| rmsgs -s"
410: .)l
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