Name
mailx
Synopsis
mailx [options
] [users
] Mail [options
] [users
]
Read mail, or send mail to other users.
For a summary of commands, type ?
in command mode (e.g., when reading
mail) or ~?
in input mode
(e.g., when sending mail). The start-up file .mailrc in the user’s home directory is
useful for setting display variables and for defining alias
lists.
Version Names
The original V7 Unix mail program provided a very spartan interactive user interface.[*] This inspired the creation of Berkeley Mail, a more capable mail-reading program for BSD Unix. Not surprisingly, and because Unix systems distinguish between uppercase and lowercase, the program was named Mail, and it lived in the /usr/ucb directory. When the System V developers imported Berkeley Mail, they renamed it mailx, to avoid the case-distinction problem. By that name the command was standardized in POSIX. Today, just to keep life interesting, different systems offer the program under multiple names and locations, as follows:
- Solaris
The program is in /usr/bin/mailx. /usr/ucb/mail and /usr/ucb/Mail are symbolic links to it.
- GNU/Linux
The program is in /bin/mail. /usr/bin/Mail is a symbolic link to it. There is no mailx command.
- Mac OS X
The program is in /usr/bin/mailx. /usr/bin/mail is a hard link to it. Because the Mac OS X HFS filesystem ignores case, /usr/bin/Mail is the same as /usr/bin/mail (i.e., typing Mail at a shell prompt runs /usr/bin/mail).
Common Options
-
-b
address
Send blind carbon copies to address. Quote the list ...
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