Mail

Reason for knowing

The main reason that a Unix user would want to know about Mail is because he/she can rest assure that all Unix systems will have access to this program. Pine or Elm may or may not be on the Unix system that you are accessing; therefore, if you just get a basic knowledge of how to read and send messages then you will be able to access your mail no matter what mail program is being used on that particular system.

Reading Messages

When you would like to read your messages from the Mail program, at the command line just type in mail <Enter>. This will prompt the Mail program to show all your mail messages with the last one that was recieved first. Sometimes this way of entering your E-mail is really not to efficient especially when you have alot of messages saved in your inbox. If you run into this problem then you may choose to enter into the Mail program using the More command. This is done by typing in at the command prompt mail |more <Enter> . This will allow you to either read your messages line by line or screen by screen. To read them line by line you would use the <Return> key after you have read what is displayed on the screen. If you would like to read your messages screen by screen then you would simply hit the <Space Bar> after reading what is already displayed on the screen.

Sending Messages

If you would like to compose a message to someone, this can be accomplished by typing in mail recipient@address <Enter>. This begins your composing session. If you would like to send the message with a subject line you would type in on the first line subject:your subject here then hit <Enter>. You will now be ready to begin your message. Just type what ever you would like. After you have finished composing your message and you are ready to send it out, hit the <Enter> to bring you to a new line then just hold the <Control> key and press d. Your message will be send to the recipient.

Attachments

Sometimes it is necessary to send out an attachment along with an E-mail. If you need to do this with the Mail program, all you would have to do is at the command line type in mail recipient@address < file name <Enter>. This command attaches the content of the file to the E-mail. This command can only be used for text files or files that have been uuencoded.

If you are sending out a file that is not of text format such as an executable file then you will first have to "reformat" it using the uuencode command. This is accomplished by typing in at the command prompt, uuencode fileName.exe fileName.uu . This will generate a file with the extension of uu. You would then attach the file that has the uu extension on it just as stated above. When the recipient recieves this file they will have to "decode" it with the use of the command uudecode fileName.uu . When sending out a file that has been uuencoded you should be sure to tell the recipient of what type the file should be so that he/she can redirect the out put into an appropriate file (ie if it is and executable then the recipient should save it in a file name.exe). Inorder to redirect the file out put of uudecoding you would use the command uudecode fileName.uu > fileName.exe . If the recipient does not redirect the out put of the file then it will be displayed in the terminal window automatically.





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