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)