A Beginner's Guide to the Internet/INTERNET.ISO/text/email/e-mail__

Text File | 1995-03-11 | 12.3 KB | 355 lines

Compiled by OARnet
Last change Thu Mar 11 14:49:12 EST 1993

This introduction assumes you are sending mail using the UNIX mail
command in /usr/ucb/mail. To find out which mail command you are using,
type

    which mail


A. How to Send Electronic Mail From Your UNIX Account

To send electronic mail from your UNIX account, you will need to know
the address of the person to whom you are sending. Often, the mail
address will be of the form [e-mail] or [e-mail].
The easiest way to find someone's address is to ask them. Directories
of electronic mail addresses are under construction at universities and
companies across the world; however, right now the development is
decentralized and incomplete.

Suppose you want to send a message to a person who has given you the
e-mail address [e-mail]. At your normal UNIX prompt, type:

    mail [e-mail]

The machine will prompt you for a subject. Type in a subject and press
Return.

    Subject: First Electronic Mail Message

Then, just start typing the contents of your mail message, which might
look like this:

    This is my first electronic mail message. Please respond
    to let me know it reached you all right.

    Wilma Stephens

To end the message, just type a period on a line by itself:

    .

You should see your regular system prompt again, represented by "$"
below. The session in which you sent the above message
would have looked something like this:

    $ mail [e-mail]
    Subject: First Electronic Mail Message
    This is my first electronic mail message. Please respond
    to let me know it reached you all right.

    Wilma Stephens
    .
    $

If you are composing a message and you want to stop and cancel the
message, type Control-c twice. To do this, hold down the Control
key and press "c", and repeat. (See below for information on recovering
and editing an aborted mail message.)

To practice sending and receiving mail, you can send some mail to
A Short Electronic Mail Primer
yourself and then read it. You can send mail to several people by
including several addresses after the command "mail" when you begin
to draft your message.


B. How to Read Mail on UNIX

The system will tell you if you have mail when you log in. To read
your electronic mail, type

    mail

If you have received any electronic mail and your system uses the
default BSD UNIX mail, you will
see a bunch of abbreviated mail headers and a "&" prompt:

  N 1 [e-mail]       Fri Mar  5 14:58   36/1519  Dave Knight
  N 2 [e-mail]       Fri Mar  5 15:06   49/1255  nhc gopher
  N 3 [e-mail]     Fri Mar  5 15:17   56/1940  Re:  please send
  &

The "N" stands for new and the numbers reflect the order the messages
came in; the address, in the form [e-mail] or
[e-mail] (or worse), is an e-mail address for the person
who sent the mail. Next comes the date and time the message was
received, the size in lines and in bytes, and the subject that the
sender specified.

To start reading the messages, just press the Return key at the "&"
prompt. If the message is more than one screen long, a reverse-video
line that says "--More--" will appear at the bottom of each screen. To
scroll to the next screen of text, press the space bar. Keep pressing
the space bar for each screen of text until you see the "&" prompt
again. At this point you can reply to the sender by typing "r" or you
can type mail privately to the sender by typing "m" followed by a space
and then their address as given in the header.

To get another list of headers, type "h". The "current" message will be
preceded by ">".

To show a message again, type in its sequence number (the number in the
second column of the header).  To read the next message, just press
Return like you did the first time.  To quit, type "q". All these
commands must be followed by pressing Return (except for just Return
alone to read the next message!).

Some Commands You Can Use at the "&"

    m <[e-mail]>    send mail to <[e-mail]>
    h            show message headers
    r            reply to the sender of the
                message you have just read
    R            reply to the sender and anyone else
                who received the message
    q            quit and save
    x            quit and leave the messages as before
                you entered mail
    s <filename>        save the current message in <filename>.
    Return or n        show next new message
    <#>             display message number #
                (e.g., "3" prints message 3)
    d            delete previous message
    d <#>            delete message number <#>

After you have read the messages and have quit with "q" from the mail
interface, the messages will be stored in a file called "mbox" unless
you specify otherwise. You can set up such a specification, and a lot
of other parameters for mail to use, in a special file that always
stays in your home directory.


C. More Advanced Mail Features

Once you're actually writing a mail message, you can use tilde escapes to
do special things by putting "~" and a letter at the beginning of a
line by itself and pressing Return. Here are some common tilde escapes
you will want to use:

    Commonly Used Tilde Escapes


    ~v        edit in vi
    ~!<cmd>        execute outside shell command
    ~m1        put mail message 1 in this letter
    ~p        redraw the screen, interpolating
            copied-in text (like message 1)
    ~r <file>    copy in <file>
    ~h        prompt for new receivers, subject, cc
            and bcc.  Allows editing of subject, etc.
    ~?        this list plus some more


Forwarding a Message

Here's an example of using tilde escapes to forward a message you have
received to another user.  Suppose you have received  a mail file that
you want to forward to [e-mail].  When you type "h" at "&" and
get a list of headers, suppose that the mail file you want to forward
is #1:

    & h
      > 1 [e-mail]    Wed Mar 10 14:07   16/746  Mail Works!
    &

You would type "m [e-mail]", a subject for your message (at the
"Subject:" prompt), and a brief introduction to the message.
Then, to include the first mail file, at the start of a new line in
your message, type "~m1". The machine replies, "Interpolating: 1", and
tells you to continue. Your message might look like this:

    & m [e-mail]
    Subject: Got Mail From Paula!
    Here is a message from Paula. She seems to be getting
    used to the e-mail system!

    ~m1
    Interpolating: 1
    (continue)

To see the whole message with the message copied into it, at the
beginning of the next line type

    ~p

You might see this:

    -------
    Message contains:
    To: [e-mail]

    Here is a message from Paula. She seems to be getting
    used to the e-mail system!

    >From [e-mail] Wed Mar 10 14:07:55 1993
    >Received:  for [e-mail]
    >    by dialup.oar.net (5.65c+KVa/920824.1144) id AA03676; Wed,
    10 Mar 1993 14:07:54 -0500
    >Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1993 14:07:54 -0500
    >From: Paula Williams <[e-mail]>
    >Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
    >To: [e-mail]
    >Subject: Mail Works!
    >Status: R
    >
    >This is my first mail message. It's great
    >to be networking with you!
    >
    >Paula Williams
    (continue)

Then you could end the message to send it, add additional information,
or invoke the editor, if you want. You can invoke the editor by typing
"~v" on a new line by itself. (Notes: To exit the vi editor, type ":wq"
from the editor. See information on using the vi editor under separate
cover.)

After you have finished composing your mail, type "." alone on
a line, as usual, to send it.


Sending a File by Electronic Mail

To send a UNIX file that you have previously prepared by electronic
mail, you need to include it in a message. Reading in a regular file
stored in your directory is similar to forwarding a file. "~r <file>"
on a line by itself, inside your mail message, will copy <file> to your
message. You will have to type "~p" to see your message as it now appears.
Again, you can use "~v" to edit or view the file further.


Changing the Recipients or Subject of a Mail Message While In Progress

"~h" is another useful tilde escape. It will redisplay your "To:" and
"Subject:" lines so you can edit them, and displays "cc:" and "bcc:"
lines so you can specify recipients (including blank carbon copies on
the "bcc:" line).  Note: if you initiated writing your message with the
"mail -s" option, your subject will be in the ultimate message, but won't
show when you use "~h".


Executing UNIX Commands From Inside Mail

After reading any mail file or at any time during your mail session,
you may say the following:

    !command    execute a UNIX command

A useful application of this is "!ls", which you can use to ascertain
the name of a file to which you want to append a message or to ascertain
the name of a file you want to forward to another user.


Aborting a Message in Progress

If you decide you don't want to send a message while you are writing
it, type Control-c twice. Mail will save your "killed" message in the
outside directory as dead.letter. If you decide later you want to
insert part of this file into a mail message you're writing, "~d" will
copy in the contents of dead.letter.  Then you can "~p" and "~v"  to
view and edit your message's new contents.


Mail Aliases

If you find yourself sending mail often to the same group of electronic
addresses, you may want to set up a mail alias for your private use.

Aliases (and customization parameters as discussed in the next section)
that you maintain for your use reside in a special file in your home
directory. To create an alias, edit the file .mailrc:

    vi .mailrc

Add some aliases in the form:

    alias <alias_name> <addr1> <addr2> <addr3> <addr4>

Substitute the name of the alias for <alias_name> and the e-mail
addresses you want to include for the <addr> fields. Do not press Return
between addresses; just extend the line, letting it wrap around.

For example, here is an alias as it might appear in a .mailrc file.
Note that it is one long, continuous line.

    alias announce [e-mail] [e-mail].o
    hio-state.edu [e-mail] [e-mail] hph@
    ms.appstate.edu [e-mail]


Parameters to Modify the Way Your Mail Is Handled

Parameters can be set or unset in a .mailrc file in order
to control your mail environment.

These are binary parameters set by the command "set <option>" or unset
by "unset <option>".

    Binary Options to "set" or "unset"

    append        causes any messages saved to be appended to the
            end of an existing file rather than prepended
    ask        causes mail to prompt you for the subject of each
            message
    askcc        causes mail to prompt for additional recipients
            after you initiate sending of a mail message with
            a period (dot) or Control-d. If you press Return,
            the previously set list remains the same.
    autoprint    causes the delete (d) command to type the next
            message after deleting the current message
    dot        causes mail to interpret a period alone on a line
            as the terminator of a message
    hold        causes messages to be held so that headers for
            messages already read will appear the next time
            you type mail (otherwise, mail that has been read
            is stored in a file named mbox)
    metoo        causes the sender to be included in the expansion
            of an alias
    nosave        prevents aborted messages from being saved in
            the file dead.letter

Here is an example of part of a .mailrc with some of the binary parameters
set. Note: the UNIX system may have some of these set by default. The append,
ask, and dot options are often set by default.

    set metoo
    set hold
    set askcc


Other Mail Parameters

Other mail parameters must be "set" to have a particular value using

    set <param>=<value>

Here are some examples. The "record" parameter names a file to which
the mail system will append a copy of each mail message that you send.
The "indentprefix" parameter names a character or set of characters used
as a prefix to each line of a forwarded electronic mail message. The
example of forwarding given above uses the prefix set in the second line.

    set record=/home/paula/outbox
    set indentprefix='>'
    set printmail='enscript -Pps'
    set PAGER=/usr/ucb/more
    set VISUAL=/usr/ucb/vi
    set EDITOR=/usr/ucb/vi
    set crt=22

For more information on individual parameters, see the man page for mail or
consult a reference manual.
.