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