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Full Discussion: Problems using Unix mail command (2)
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Problems using Unix mail command (2) Post 302579293 by Clovis_Sangrail on Monday 5th of December 2011 10:55:14 AM
Old 12-05-2011
Problems using Unix mail command (2)
I recently generated myself the following error when attempting to use the Unix mail command:

The flags you gave make no sense since you're not sending mail.

There is a recent thread about this issue here in unix.com (with a title very much like this thread's title), but it was closed without explaining the reason for this error message, or at least not explaining the reason why I got this error, so I'm posting this message.

It turned out that I was calling the mail command and not giving it a destination address, even though I thought that I was:
Code:
cat exception_rpt |  mail -s "$BNK Exception Report `date`" $addr

I was reading email addresses out of a file and into the "$addr" variable, and executing the above command, but my file had blank lines in it! When I ran my shell script in debug mode (#!/bin/sh -x) I saw that each blank line resulted in an "extra" call to the mail command, with "$addr" set to a null string.

I suspect that this is the most common way to get the error:

"The flags you gave make no sense since you're not sending mail."
Last edited by Franklin52; 12-07-2011 at 05:52 AM.. Reason: Please use code tags for code and data samples, thank you
 

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LEARN ABOUT MINIX

mail

MAIL(1) 						      General Commands Manual							   MAIL(1)

NAME

       mail - send and receive electronic mail

SYNOPSIS

       mail [-dpqrv] [-f file] [user]

OPTIONS

       -d     Force use of the shell variable MAILER

       -f     Use file instead of /usr/spool/mail/user as mailbox

       -p     Print all mail and then exit

       -q     Quit program if SIGINT received

       -r     Reverse print order, i.e., print oldest first

       -v     Verbose mode

EXAMPLES

       mail ast 	   # Send a message to ast

       mail		   # Read your mail

DESCRIPTION

       Mail  is  an  extremely simple electronic mail program.	It can be used to send or receive email on a single MINIX system, in which case it
       functions as user agent and local delivery agent.  If the flag MAILER is defined in mail.c, it can also call a transport  agent	to  handle
       remote mail as well.  No such agent is supplied with MINIX.

       When  called  by  user  with no arguments, it examines the mailbox /usr/spool/mail/user, prints one message (depending on the -r flag), and
       waits for one of the following commands:

	 <newline> Go to the next message
	 -	   Print the previous message
	 !command  Fork off a shell and execute command
	 CTRL-D    Update the mailbox and quit (same as q)
	 d	   Delete the current message and go to the next one
	 q	   Update the mailbox and quit (same as CTRL-D)
	 p	   Print the current message again
	 s [file]  Save message in the named file
	 x	   Exit without updating the mailbox

       To send mail, the program is called with the name of the recipient as an
       argument.  The mail is sent, along with a postmark line containing the date.
       For local delivery, a file named after the recipient in the directory
       /usr/spool/mail must be writable.

       If the directory /usr/spool/mail does not exist then the mail is
       dumped on the console, so that system programs have a way to notify
       a user on a system that does not have a mail spool.

																	   MAIL(1)
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