msh(1)							      General Commands Manual							    msh(1)

NAME

       msh - MH shell (only available within the message handling system, mh)

SYNOPSIS

       msh [-help] [-prompt string] [file]

OPTIONS

       Prints  a  list	of  the valid options for this command.  Sets the prompt for msh. If the string you specify includes white space, you must
       enclose it in double quotes ("). If you do not specify this option, the default prompt is (msh).

       The following defaults are used by msh:

       file defaults to -prompt (msh)

DESCRIPTION

       The command msh is an interactive program that implements a subset of the normal MH commands operating on a single file	in  packf  format.
       That  is,  msh is used to read a file that contains a number of messages, as opposed to the standard MH style of reading a number of files,
       each file being a separate message in a folder.

       The chief advantage of msh is that, unlike the normal MH style, it allows a file to have more than one message in it. In addition, msh  can
       be used on other files, such as message archives which have been packed using packf.

       When invoked, msh reads the named file, and enters a command loop. You can type most of the normal MH commands. The syntax and semantics of
       these commands typed to msh are identical to their MH counterparts. In cases where the nature of msh would be inconsistent with the way	MH
       works  (for  example, specifying a +folder with some commands), msh will duly inform you. The commands that msh currently supports are: ali
       burst	    comp	dist	     folder  forw	  inc		mark	     mhmail	   msgchk  next 	packf	      pick
       prev	    refile repl        rmm	    scan	send	     show sortm       whatnow	   whom

       In addition, msh has a help command which gives a brief overview of all the msh options. To terminate msh, either type <CTRL/D>, or use the
       quit command. If the file is writable and has been modified, then using quit will ask you if the file should be updated.

       A redirection facility is supported by msh. Commands may be followed by one of the following standard symbols: Open an  interprocess  chan-
       nel; connect output to another command.	Write output to file.  Append output to file.

       If file starts with a tilde (~), then a C-shell-like expansion takes place. Note that commands are interpreted by sh(1).

       When  parsing commands to the left of any redirection symbol, msh will honor the backslash () as the quote next-character symbol, and dou-
       ble quotes (") as quote-word delimiters. All other input tokens are separated by white space (spaces and tabs).

       You may wish to use an alternative profile for the commands that msh executes; see mh_profile(4) for details of the $MH	environment  vari-
       able.

RESTRICTIONS

       The msh shell is not the C-shell, and a lot of the facilities provided by the latter are not present in the former. In particular, msh does
       not support back-quoting, history substitutions, variable substitutions, or alias substitutions.

       msh does not understand back-quoting. The only effective way to use pick inside msh is to always use the seq select option. If you add  the
       following line to your pick will work equally well from both the shell and msh:

       pick: -seq select -list

       There is a strict limit of messages per file in packf format which msh can handle. Usually, this limit is 1000 messages.

PROFILE COMPONENTS

       Path: To determine your Mail directory

       Msg-Protect: To set protections when creating a new file

       fileproc: Program to file messages

       showproc: Program to show messages

FILES

       The user profile.  The system customization file.

SEE ALSO

       csh(1), packf(1), sh(1), mh_profile(4)

																	    msh(1)