NEWMAIL

Section: Misc. Reference Manual Pages (1L)
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NAME

newmail - display numbers of new, unread, and total mail messages

SYNTAX

newmail [ -b -d -i interval -n -s -t -v ] [ mailbox ]

killnewmail

DESCRIPTION

The newmail command displays the number of messages in the given mailbox, broken down by new messages, unread messages, and total (including old) messages. It also returns as a status code the number of new messages in the mailbox. If mailbox is not specified, then it checks the user's default mailbox, .

Killnewmail is a shell script that kills the newmail daemon (see the -d option).

Newmail accepts the following flags:

-b: Beep if the mailbox contains new messages.
-d: This option starts newmail as a daemon which checks the mailbox every interval seconds. If interval is not specified, it defaults to 30 seconds.
-i: Specifies a time interval for a delay between repeated mailbox checks. This puts the program into an endless loop. If this option is desired, consider also the -d option.
-n: Inhibits an output message if mailbox contains no messages.
-s: Specifies silent mode. Nothing is displayed, but the return status gives the number of messages. Options -s, -t, and -v are mutually exclusive, and override one another.
-t: Specifies terse mode. The numbers of messages are displayed in the form "new unread total", suitable for piping through awk.
-v: Specifies verbose mode. Displays the numbers of messages in mailbox in the format ": x new, y unread, z total messages". If x or y is zero, then the corresponding output field will be omitted. Default.

DIAGNOSTICS

A nonnegative return code specifies the number of new messages in mailbox. If the -d option is specified, then the pid of the created daemon is returned. A return code of -1 indicates an error.

CAVEAT

When in a looping mode (-i or -d), newmail can miss messages that arrive within interval seconds of reading one's mail (and thus clearing the messages' "new" flags). This is because newmail is interested only in net increases in the mailbox message count, and it takes that much time before the count can be assumed to be reset to zero.

AUTHOR

Written by Steve Creps, Indiana University, October 24, 1988, based on observation of Unix mailbox format. Not derived from anyone else's code. Last modified July 19, 1991.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 22:24:34 GMT, January 16, 2023