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)