HELP MAIL — VMS 5.0
Invokes the VMS Personal Mail Utility (MAIL), which is used to send
messages to other users of the system. For a complete description
of the VMS Personal Mail Utility, including information about
the MAIL command and its qualifiers, see the VMS Mail Utility
Manual.
Format:
MAIL [file-spec] [recipient-name]
Additional information available:
ParametersCommand QualifiersExamples
Parameters
file-spec
Specifies an optional file containing message text to be sent to the
specified users. If you omit the file type, the default file type
is TXT. The recipient-name parameter is required with the file-spec
parameter.
If you omit the file-spec parameter, MAIL is invoked to process MAIL
commands interactively.
No wild card characters are allowed in the file specification.
recipient-name
Specifies one or more users to receive the message. If the
file-spec parameter is specified, this parameter is required. A
recipient-name is the name that the user uses to log in. If any
user is on a remote node, you should precede that recipient-name
parameter with the name of the remote node followed by two colons
(::).
As an alternative to listing the user names, you can specify a
distribution list file containing user names. Simply precede the
distribution list file specification with an at sign (@) and enclose
this construction in quotation marks ("). The file you specify
should contain the user names, entered one per line, denoting any
remote nodes as described above. If you omit the file type, the
default file type is DIS. No wild card characters are allowed in
the distribution list file specification.
Command Qualifiers
Additional information available:
/PERSONAL_NAME/SUBJECT/EDIT/SELF
/PERSONAL_NAME
/PERSONAL_NAME=name /NOPERSONAL_NAME Specifies the personal name to be used when sending a message. This qualifier does not override the default personal name; the personal name is changed only for the current message. Specifying /NOPERSONAL_NAME removes the default personal name for the current message.
/SUBJECT
/SUBJECT=text
Specifies the subject of the message for the heading. If the text
consists of more than one word, enclose the text in quotation marks
(").
You must include a file specification on the command line to enable
this qualifier.
If you omit this qualifier, the message is sent without a subject
notation.
/EDIT
/EDIT=[(send,reply=extract,forward)] Sets the default to /EDIT for the SEND, REPLY, and FORWARD commands.
/SELF
/SELF Sends a copy of the message containing the file specification on the command line back to you.
Examples
1. $ MAIL
MAIL>
This MAIL command invokes MAIL to process commands interactively.
2. $ MAIL/SUBJECT="New Project" PROJECT.DOC JONES,SMITH,ADAMS
This MAIL command specifies that the file named PROJECT.DOC is to be
sent to users JONES, SMITH, and ADAMS, with a subject description of
New Project in the heading.
3. $ MAIL/SUBJECT="Vacation Policy Change" NEWSLETTR "@USERS"
This MAIL command invokes MAIL to send the file NEWSLETTR.TXT to all
the users named in the file USERS.DIS. The subject description is
Vacation Policy Change.