NEWALIAS

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NAME

newalias - install new elm aliases for user and/or system

SYNOPSIS

newalias [-q]

HP-UX COMPATIBILITY

Level:: HP-UX/CONTRIBUTED
Origin:: Hewlett-Packard

DESCRIPTION

Newalias creates new hash and data files from a text file. If the program is invoked by any account other than the superuser account, the program looks for a file called $home/.alias_text and, upon finding it, creates files $home/.alias_hash and $home/.alias_data for the Elm program.

If the superuser invokes the program, they are given the option of either updating their personal alias files or the system alias files. The question can be supressed, with the default being the user files for the superuser, if the ``-q'' flag is present upon invokation.

The format that the program expects is;

        alias, alias, .. : comment : address
or
        alias, alias, .. : comment : alias, alias, ...
   
The first form is for an individual user such as;

        dave, taylor : Dave Taylor : veeger!hpcnou!dat

and the second is for defining a group alias such as;

        gurus : Unix Gurus : alan, john, dave, mike, richard,
                             larry, t_richardson

Note that lines can be continued at will, blank lines are accepted without error, and that any line starting with '#' is considered a comment and is not processed.

The comment field is thrown away by this program, but it is recommended that it contain the name of the user who the alias is for.

Finally, aliases can contain other aliases, and/or groups;

        unix : Unix people : gurus, taylor, jonboy

FILES

$home/.alias_text alias source for user
$home/.alias_hash alias hash table for user
$home/.alias_data alias data file for user
/usr/mail/.alias_text alias source for system
/usr/mail/.alias_hash alias hash table for system
/usr/mail/.alias_data alias data file for system

AUTHOR

Dave Taylor, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories.

DIAGNOSTICS

Newalias has a couple of descriptive error messages which don't need to be detailed here. It is, however, worth noting that the checkalias program can be used to ensure that the aliases are in the proper order and are available for the Elm system.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 10:49:44 GMT, December 12, 2024