NAME

mh − Message Handler

DESCRIPTION

MH consists of a collection of fairly simple single-purpose programs to send, receive, save, and retrieve messages.  See the individual MH reference pages for descriptions of the programs that make up MH.

Unlike mail, MH is an optionally installed basesystem component.  You can freely intersperse MH commands with other shell commands that allow you to read and answer your mail while you are performing another task.

To get started using MH, edit either the .profile, .login, or .cshrc files in your home directory to add the pathname /usr/new/mh to your $PATH. Check the manual entry for the shell you use, if you do not know how to do this. Run the inc command, if you have never used MH before.  The inc command creates the necessary default files and directories after prompting you.  It also moves mail from your system maildrop into your MH +inbox folder.  Each message is converted to MH format and stored as separate files in your +inbox folder until you read it.  When you read a message, you can refile it in another file that you create.

Folders are directories in which messages are stored; the folders themselves are stored in your Mail directory.  They are similar to folders in a normal office filing system.  See refile() and folder() for more details. For each message it processes, inc prints one line only.  The one-line display contains the From: field, the Subject: field and as much of the first line of the message as it can accommodate.  The first message that inc processes becomes your current message.  The current message is the message that all MH commands operate on unless you have specified the msg argument.  You must run inc each time you want to incorporate new mail into your MH file.

The scan command prints a list of the messages in your current folder.

The commands show, next and prev are used to read specific messages from the current folder. Of these, show displays the current message.  You can also display a specific message by specifying its number, which you pass as an argument to show. In the following example, the contents of message number 10 in the current folder will be displayed.

% show 10

The commands next and prev respectively display, the message numerically following or preceding the current message. In all cases, the message displayed becomes the current message. If there is no current message, show may be called with an argument, or next may be used to advance to the first message. The command rmm (remove message) deletes the current message.

You can delete messages other than the current message by specifying the message number or the message numbers.  When you specify more than one message, you separate each message number by a space.  In the following example, messages 2, 4 and 6 in the current folder are deleted. 

% rmm 2 4 6

The command repl is used to respond to the current message (by default). It places you in the editor with a prototype response form. While you are in the editor, you may peruse the item you are responding to by reading the file @.

The comp command allows you to compose a message by putting you in the editor on a blank message header form, and then lets you send it.

All the MH commands may be run with the single argument, −help, which causes them to print a list of the arguments with which they may be invoked.

Commands which take a message number as an argument ( scan, show, repl, ...) also take one of the following words: first, prev, cur, next, or last to indicate (respectively) the first, previous, current, next, or last message in the current folder.

Commands, such as rmm, scan, or show, which take a range of message numbers also take any of the following abbreviations:

num1−num2 − Indicates all messages in the range num1 to num2, inclusive. The specified range must contain at least one message. 

num:+n

num:−n − Up to n messages beginning with (or ending with) message num.  The value of num may be any of the MH message keywords: first, prev, cur, next or last.

first: n

prev: n

next: n

last: n - The first, previous, next or last n messages, if they exist. 

There are many other possibilities, such as creating multiple folders for different topics, and automatically refiling messages according to subject, source, destination, or content.  See the individual Reference Pages for more details of the rest of the MH commands.

Following is a list of all the MH commands:

FILES

Commands