CK

Section: (1L)
Updated: 4 February 1988
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NAME

ck, ckd - report newly arrived mail

SYNOPSIS

ck [ -v ] [ -o outfile ] [ mailbox ]
ckd [ -v ] [ -o outfile ] [ -iinterval ] [ mailbox ]

DESCRIPTION

ck and ckd are, respectively, the command line and daemon versions of a program to monitor your incoming mail. They examine mailbox files and report the sender and subject of each message contained in the file. If a mailbox is not specified, $HOME/mailbox will be used. If the user does not have read access to the mailbox, an attempt will be made to report the size of the file and when it was last modified. This allows the user to check if someone else recently received mail.

Although there are dozens of similar programs wandering around UNIX land, many don't work on common system configurations. (E.g., from only works if the mailbox lives in /usr/spool/mail; biff and rcvalert don't get along well with the SunView windows; etc.) ck and ckd contribute to this parochial mass, since currently they only work with MMDF format files (or more specifically, files in which each message is separated by a line containing four Control-A's). But they do try to be more flexible about how they notify the user.

ck reports the status of the mailbox once and exits. ckd runs in the background and reports whenever it notices that the mailbox has been modified. ckd terminates automatically when it sees that the process from which it was invoked has also terminated. For example, if you run ckd from your .login file, it will terminate shortly after you logout.

ck normally prints to the standard output, and ckd to the standard error. This can be changed via the -o option described below. ckd will try to ring the bell on the output device whenever it detects new mail.

OPTIONS

-v: After listing the contents of the mailbox, display its size and time of modification.
-o outfile: Redirect output to the file or device specified by outfile. If the file already exists, the output is appended to it.
-iinterval: Check the mailbox every interval seconds instead of the default, 120. This option is only meaningful in ckd.

FILES

$HOME/mailbox: default mailbox file to monitor

DIAGNOSTICS

Exit status is -1 if the file specified in the -o option can't be opened. Otherwise, ck's exit status is equal to the number of messages found in the mailbox, and ckd's is 0.

BUGS

Only handles MMDF format files.

There should be an option to turn the bell on or off.

Ckd should be smarter about reporting changes in the file. Right now it announces any change which leaves messages in the file (even deleting some messages). A better approach would be to do some smart-work to see if it looks like new messages were added.

AUTHOR

Wayne Mesard, MESARD@BBN.COM

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Time: 06:32:15 GMT, December 12, 2024