The Berkeley mailer is an effective and easy to use mailer. The mail program
is invoked by entering:
Mail <logonid>
Note the capital 'M' in Mail. Using lowercase 'mail' will work, but that
mail program is not as functional as Mail.
The logonid belongs to the person that you wish to send to.
Once you enter Mail, you are prompted for a subject and then you
are allowed to edit your letter. Basic editing is very limited; you can't go
back to edit previous lines once you've gone on to a new line. If you
wish more extensive editing, issue v on a new line. You will
then be in vi and able to edit the text of your mail file. Once done
editing, write the file to disk and quit (via ZZ or :wq). You will then be
placed back into the limited Mail editor.
Once you are finished writing your letter, sending it is done by entering
<ctrl-d> or by hitting a period on a line by itself. If you change your
mind about sending a letter, you can cancel
it by entering <ctrl-c> twice consecutively; the letter you were about
to send is placed in a file called 'dead.letter' in your home directory.
If you have already created a file you wish to mail someone, issue:
Mail <logonId> < <letterfile>
If you have mail in your mailbox when you log in, the system will inform
you with the message 'you have mail'. If mail is received while you are
logged in you will not be told you have mail unless you select the XBiff
tools-window option (discussed previously) or run the biff command.
To see your mail headers, and to read
your mail, simply enter Mail. The header list shows the letter number,
the sender, the date and time of sending, and a excerpt from the subject
line. Reading mail is done by selecting the number of the letter
you wish to read at the prompt. Viewing the mail list can be
done again after reading a letter by entering 'h'. After you have read
the letters that you wished to read, you can exit Mail by entering
'q'. All letters that have been read are appended to a file called 'mbox'
in your home directory. If you have questions about mail while you are
using it, enter 'help' at the prompt; a complete list of commands will be
displayed.