Command Reference Guide
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STANDARD Printed by: Nora Chuang [nchuang] STANDARD
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mailx(1) mailx(1)
NAME
mailx - interactive message processing system
SYNOPSIS
Send mode:
mailx [-FUm][-s subject ][-r address][-h number] address ...
Receive mode:
mailx -e
mailx
[-UHLiNn][-u user ]
mailx -f [-UHLiNn][filename ]
Obsolescent:
mailx [-f filename][-UHLiNn]
DESCRIPTION
mailx provides a comfortable, flexible environment for sending and receiving messages electronically.
When reading mail, mailx provides commands to facilitate saving, deleting, and responding to messages.
When sending mail, mailx allows editing, reviewing and other modification of the message as it is
created.
Incoming mail for each user is stored in a standard file called the system mailbox for that user. When
using
mailx to read messages, the system mailbox is used unless an alternate mailbox file is specified by
using the -f option with or without a specific filename. As incoming messages are read from the system
mailbox, they are marked to be moved to a secondary file for storage (unless specific action is taken) so that
the messages need not be seen again. This secondary file is called the mbox and is usually located in the
user’s
HOME directory (see MBOX description under ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
below for a description of
this file and other environment variables used by
mailx). Messages remain in this file until specifically
removed.
Command-line options start with a hyphen (-), and any other arguments are assumed to be destinations
(recipients). If no recipients are specified,
mailx attempts to read messages from the system mailbox.
Recipient addresses specified on the command line must total less than 1024 characters in length. You may
declare an
alias or group (see COMMANDS below) to specify a recipient address or list of addresses of up
to 8191 characters, and use that alias or group name (though each address in the list must still be less than
1024 characters). If you wish to specify a list of recipient addresses of greater length than this, have your
system administrator declare an alias or group in the system alias file
/etc/mail/aliases and use
that alias name instead.
Options
mailx recognizes the following command-line options:
-e Test for presence of mail. mailx prints nothing and exits with a successful return
code if there is mail to read. Sometimes used in login scripts such as
$HOME/.profile to check for mail during login.
-f Read messages from filename instead of the user’s system mailbox. If filename is not
specified, the secondary mbox is used.
-F Record the message in a file named after the first recipient. Overrides the record
environment variable, if set.
-h number The number of network "hops" made so far. This is provided for network software to
prevent infinite delivery loops.
-H Print header summary only.
-L Print complete header information only.
-i Ignore interrupts. Also see the description of the ignore environment below.
-n Do not initialize from the system default mailx.rc file.
-m Do not add MIME header lines Mime Version, Content Type & Content Encoding to
the header information while sending mails.
Section 1−−498 − 1 − HP-UX Release 11i: December 2000
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