NAME

newmail − notify users of new mail in mailboxes

SYNOPSIS

newmail [-i interval] [-w] [file-spec ...]

DESCRIPTION

newmail monitors the user’s incoming or specified mailbox.  Without any options, newmail runs in the background at a default interval of 60 seconds to monitor the user’s incoming mailbox. 

Options

newmail recognizes the following options:

-i interval This option changes the time interval between mailbox checks to the value specified, in seconds. 

-w This option runs the program within a window where it has a more succinct output format and also runs in foreground rather than background. 

The basic operation is that the program checks the incoming or specified mailbox each interval seconds and lists any new mail that has arrived in any of the mailboxes, indicating the sender name, and the subject of the message. 

The following message is produced when the program is initially started:

Newmail started: folder foldername

Each entry displayed can be in a number of different formats, depending on the mode of the program and the status of the message.  If newmail is running in a window (-w option), the output resembles:

New mail from sender name - subject of message

or

PRIORITY mail from sender name - subject of message

where sender name is either the name of the person sending it, if available (the ARPA From: line), or some other brief indication of origin.  If there is no subject, the message (No Subject Specified) is displayed.  If newmail is checking more than one mailbox, output lines are prefixed by the folder-name or prefix string specified by file-spec.

If the message is a "priority" message (meaning that it has a field in the header Priority:), the line will read PRIORITY mail instead of New mail. 

When running newmail without the -w option, the output format is modified so that it is suitable for display on an already active screen.  newmail messages are prefixed with a pair of pointer characters as follows:

>> New mail from sender name - subject of message

or

>> PRIORITY mail from sender name - subject of message

In this case, output lines are also prefixed when monitoring multiple mailboxes. 

file-spec is made up of two components: the folder name and the prefix-string, the latter of which can always be omitted. The format is foldername=prefix-string.  Metacharacters such as +, =, and % which indicate the folder directory in the elm mailer (see elm(1)) is available to specify the folder name (see EXAMPLES ). 

newmail runs until the user logs out or explicitly kills it, and can internally reset itself if the mailbox shrinks in size and then grows again. 

EXAMPLES

Here are some example invocations:

Check incoming mailbox every 60 seconds:

newmail

Check incoming mailbox every 15 seconds for new messages from joe or root. 

newmail -i 15 joe root

Monitor the incoming mailbox for new messages from user mary and the folder in your maildir called postmaster.  Prefix all messages from mary with the string Mary, and messages from postmaster (see elm(1)) with POBOX.  Also, monitor folder /tmp/mbox:

newmail "mary=Mary" +postmaster=POBOX /tmp/mbox

WARNING

If the interval is set to less than 10 seconds, newmail issues a warning message that such short intervals are not recommended. 

interval must be less than 232 seconds because newmail uses sleep() (see sleep(3C)).

AUTHOR

newmail was developed by HP. 

Hewlett-Packard Company  —  HP-UX Release 9.0: August 1992