Readmsg extracts selected mail messages from a mail folder.
One helpful use of the program is when you are composing a
response to a mail message in an external editor. In this
case, you can run readmsg to pull a copy of the original
message into the editing buffer.
When you run readmsg from within elm (e.g. from a subshell
escape or in an external editor while composing a mail
reply) it behaves a bit differently from when you run it
directly (e.g. from a shell command line). We will first
describe its normal behavior, and then describe how it is
different when you run it under elm.
You tell readmsg which messages to extract with the selec-tion argument. There are a couple of possible different
ways to specify the selection.
1. A lone ``*'' means select all messages in the mailbox.
2. A list of message numbers may be specified. Values of
``0'' and ``$'' in the list both mean the last message
in the mailbox. For example:
readmsg 1 3 0
extracts three messages from the folder: the first,
the third, and the last.
3. Finally, the selection may be some text to match. This
will select a mail message which exactly matches the
specified text. For example,
readmsg staff meeting
extractsthemessagewhichcontainsthewords ``staffmeeting.'' Notethatitwillnot match a message con-
taining ``Staff Meeting'' the matching is case sensi-
tive. Normally only the first message which matches
the pattern will be printed. The -a option discussed
in a moment changes this.
The -f flag indicates that you'd rather use the folder
specified rather than the default incoming mailbox. The
specified folder can be a filename or a specification such
as ``=sentmail''.
The -w flag tailors the list of mail headers that are weeded
and displayed. Header weeding is discussed below.
The -h flag instructs the program to ignore the header weed-
ing list, and include the entire header of the matched mes-
sage or messages when displaying their text.
The -n flag instructs the program to ignore the header weed-
ing list, and exclude all headers. This is used mostly for
extracting files mailed and such.
The -p flag indicates that the program should put form-feeds
(control-L) between message headers.
The -a flag indicates that all messages which match the pat-
tern specified on the command line should be printed, not
just the first. If a pattern was not specified on the com-
mand line then this flag has no effect.
When you run readmsg under elm (say in the context of an
external editor) the behavior will be different from that
described above as follows.
1. The default mail folder will be the folder you are
currently examining in elm and not necessarily your
incoming mail folder.
2. You do not need to specify a selection on the command
line. If you omit the selection then readmsg will
extract the message(s) you have selected in Elm. If
you have tagged any messages then this would be all of
the tagged messages, otherwise it would be the message
you are currently examining.
3. Normally the message numbers readmsg uses are in mail-
box order. When you call readmsg under elm and do not
override the folder selection with the -f option, then
message numbers will be sorted as they are displayed on
the elm message index screen.
Normally, readmsg selects and displays certain headers from
the message. By default, the list of selected headers
includes:
o The ``Subject:'' header.
o The ``From:'' header.
o The ``To:'' header.
o The ``Cc:'' header.
o The ``Date:'' header.
o Any header starting with ``Apparently-''.
The header weeding may be changed with the -w option. The
argument to this option is a list of header names, separated
by whitespace or commas. readmsg compares each header to
the ones in this list, and if a match is found the header is
displayed. The list entries can contain partial header
names. For instance, an entry of ``From'' would match both
the ``From<SPACE>'' line at the top of the message, as well
as any ``From:'' header. Matching is case insensitive. An
underscore (``_'') may be used to represent a space, so
specifying ``From_'' will select the ``From<SPACE>'' line
but not the ``From:'' header. A list entry may be preceded
by an exclamation point to suppress the header. Thus, a
specification of ``!From_ From'' means about the same thing
as ``From:''. When no header weeding options are specified,
the default action corresponds to:
readmsg -w "Subject: From: To: Cc: Apparently- Date:"
EXAMPLES
First off, to use this from within vi to include the text of
the current message, you could use the command:
:r !readmsg
(as you hit the ':' the editor will put you at the bottom of
the screen with the ':' prompt). The space following ':r'
is required.
Let's look at something more interesting, however;
Suppose you have the mail file;
From joe Jun 3 1986 4:45:30 MST
Subject: hello
Hey Guy! Wanta go out and have a milk this evening?
Joe
From john Jun 3 1986 4:48:20 MST
Subject: Dinner at Eight
From: John Dinley <xyz!john>
Remember you should show up about eight, okay?
- John D -
From xxzyz!cron Jun 3 1986 5:02:43 MST
Cannot connect to server: blob
Job 43243 deleted from queue.
The following commands will result in;
$ readmsg 2
[ display the second message, from John ]
$ readmsg
[ an error, unless we're calling from elm ]
$ readmsg BLOB
[ no match - case sensitive! ]
$ readmsg -h connect to server
[ displays third message, including headers ]
FILES
/usr/mail/<username> The incoming mail
$ELMSTATE Status information from elm
AUTHOR
Elm Development Group
SEE ALSO
newmail(1L), elm(1L)
BUGS
The '*' metacharacter doesn't always work as expected!
Perhaps the pattern matching should be case insensitive?
It might be confusing that messages are sorted when running
under elm with the current folder, and in mailbox order for
all other cases. When readmsg is run standalone, messages
may be truncated at lines beginning with "From". This is
not a problem when readmsg is spawned under elm because the
status information file created by elm says exactly how long
each message is.
BUG REPORTS TO
Bill Pemberton flash@virginia.edu
COPYRIGHTS
Copyright 1988-1995 by The USENET Community Trust
Derived from Elm 2.0, Copyright 1986, 1987 by Dave Taylor