1 .\"@ nail.1 - S-nail(1) reference manual.
3 .\" Copyright (c) 2000-2008 Gunnar Ritter, Freiburg i. Br., Germany.
4 .\" Copyright (c) 2012 - 2017 Steffen (Daode) Nurpmeso <steffen@sdaoden.eu>.
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34 .\"@ S-nail(1): v14.9.0-rc1 / 2017-07-01
46 .\" If not ~/.mailrc, it breaks POSIX compatibility. And adjust main.c.
51 .ds OU [no v15-compat]
52 .ds ID [v15 behaviour may differ]
53 .ds NQ [Only new quoting rules]
64 .Nd send and receive Internet mail
70 .\" Keep in SYNC: ./nail.1:"SYNOPSIS, main()
79 .Op : Ns Fl a Ar attachment Ns \&:
80 .Op : Ns Fl b Ar bcc-addr Ns \&:
81 .Op : Ns Fl c Ar cc-addr Ns \&:
82 .Op Fl M Ar type | Fl m Ar file | Fl q Ar file | Fl t
85 .Fl S Ar var Ns Op Ns = Ns Ar value Ns
88 .Op : Ns Fl X Ar cmd Ns \&:
90 .Pf : Ar to-addr Ns \&:
91 .Op Fl Fl \~ Ns : Ns Ar mta-option Ns \&:
100 .Op Fl r Ar from-addr
102 .Fl S Ar var Ns Op Ns = Ns Ar value Ns
105 .Op : Ns Fl X Ar cmd Ns \&:
106 .Op Fl Fl \~ Ns : Ns Ar mta-option Ns \&:
115 .Op Fl r Ar from-addr
117 .Fl S Ar var Ns Op Ns = Ns Ar value Ns
119 .Op : Ns Fl X Ar cmd Ns \&:
121 .Op Fl Fl \~ Ns : Ns Ar mta-option Ns \&:
126 .Mx -toc -tree html pdf ps xhtml
129 .\" .Sh DESCRIPTION {{{
132 .Bd -filled -compact -offset indent
133 .Sy Compatibility note:
134 S-nail (\*(UA) will wrap up into \%S-mailx in v15.0 (circa 2018).
135 Backward incompatibility has to be expected \(en
138 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
139 rules, for example, and shell metacharacters will become meaningful.
140 New and old behaviour is flagged \*(IN and \*(OU, and setting
143 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ,
144 will choose new behaviour when applicable.
145 \*(OB flags what will vanish, and enabling
149 enables obsoletion warnings.
153 \*(UA provides a simple and friendly environment for sending and
155 It is intended to provide the functionality of the POSIX
157 command, but is MIME capable and optionally offers extensions for
158 line editing, S/MIME, SMTP and POP3, among others.
159 \*(UA divides incoming mail into its constituent messages and allows
160 the user to deal with them in any order.
164 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
165 for manipulating messages and sending mail.
166 It provides the user simple editing capabilities to ease the composition
167 of outgoing messages, and increasingly powerful and reliable
168 non-interactive scripting capabilities.
170 .\" .Ss "Options" {{{
173 .Bl -tag -width ".It Fl BaNg"
176 Explicitly control which of the
178 shall be loaded: if the letter
180 is (case-insensitively) part of the
184 is loaded, likewise the letter
186 controls loading of the user's personal
188 file, whereas the letters
192 explicitly forbid loading of any resource files.
193 This option should be used by scripts: to avoid environmental noise they
196 from any configuration files and create a script-local environment,
197 explicitly setting any of the desired
198 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
201 This option overrides
208 command for the given user email
210 after program startup is complete (all resource files are loaded, any
212 setting is being established; only
214 commands have not been evaluated yet).
215 Being a special incarnation of
217 macros for the purpose of bundling longer-lived
219 tings, activating such an email account also switches to the accounts
221 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
226 .It Fl a Ar file Ns Op Ar =input-charset Ns Op Ar #output-charset
229 to the message (for compose mode opportunities refer to
233 .Sx "Filename transformations"
236 will be performed, but shell word expansion is restricted to the tilde
240 not be accessible but contain a
242 character, then anything before the
244 will be used as the filename, anything thereafter as a character set
247 If an input character set is specified,
248 .Mx -ix "character set specification"
249 but no output character set, then the given input character set is fixed
250 as-is, and no conversion will be applied;
251 giving the empty string or the special string hyphen-minus
253 will be treated as if
255 has been specified (the default).
257 If an output character set has also been given then the conversion will
258 be performed exactly as specified and on-the-fly, not considering the
259 file's type and content.
260 As an exception, if the output character set is specified as the empty
261 string or hyphen-minus
263 then the default conversion algorithm (see
264 .Sx "Character sets" )
265 is applied (therefore no conversion is performed on-the-fly,
267 will be MIME-classified and its contents will be inspected first) \(em
268 without support for character set conversions
270 does not include the term
272 only this argument is supported.
275 (\*(OB: \*(UA will always use line-buffered output, to gain
276 line-buffered input even in batch mode enable batch mode via
281 Send a blind carbon copy to
288 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ,
290 The option may be used multiple times.
292 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" .
296 Send carbon copies to the given receiver, if so allowed by
298 May be used multiple times.
303 the internal variable
305 which enables debug messages and disables message delivery,
306 among others; effectively turns almost any operation into a dry-run.
312 and thus discard messages with an empty message part body.
313 This command line option is \*(OB.
317 Just check if mail is present (in the system
319 or the one specified via
321 if yes, return an exit status of zero, a non-zero value otherwise.
322 To restrict the set of mails to consider in this evaluation a message
323 specification can be added with the option
328 Save the message to send in a file named after the local part of the
329 first recipient's address (instead of in
334 Read in the contents of the user's
336 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
338 (or the specified file) for processing;
339 when \*(UA is quit, it writes undeleted messages back to this file
345 argument will undergo some special
346 .Sx "Filename transformations"
351 is not a argument to the flag
353 but is instead taken from the command line after option processing has
357 that starts with a hyphen-minus, prefix with a relative path, as in
358 .Ql ./-hyphenbox.mbox .
364 and exit; a configurable summary view is available via the
370 Show a short usage summary.
376 to ignore tty interrupt signals.
382 of all messages that match the given
386 .Sx "Specifying messages"
391 option has been given in addition no header summary is produced,
392 but \*(UA will instead indicate via its exit status whether
398 note that any verbose output is suppressed in this mode and must instead
399 be enabled explicitly (e.g., by using the option
404 Special send mode that will flag standard input with the MIME
408 and use it as the main message body.
409 \*(ID Using this option will bypass processing of
410 .Va message-inject-head ,
413 .Va message-inject-tail .
419 Special send mode that will MIME classify the specified
421 and use it as the main message body.
422 \*(ID Using this option will bypass processing of
423 .Va message-inject-head ,
426 .Va message-inject-tail .
432 inhibit the initial display of message headers when reading mail or
437 for the internal variable
442 Standard flag that inhibits reading the system wide
447 allows more control over the startup sequence; also see
448 .Sx "Resource files" .
452 Special send mode that will initialize the message body with the
453 contents of the specified
455 which may be standard input
457 only in non-interactive context.
465 opened will be in read-only mode.
469 .It Fl r Ar from-addr
470 The source address that appears in the
473 header of a message (or in the
476 header if the former contains multiple addresses) is not used for
477 relaying and delegating a message over the wire via SMTP, but instead an
478 envelope will enwrap the message content and provide the necessary
479 information (i.e., the RFC 5321 reverse-path, also used to report, e.g.,
480 delivery errors) to transmit the message to its destination(s).
481 Whereas said headers and internal variables will be used by \*(UA to
482 create the envelope if the built-in SMTP
484 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) is used, a file-based MTA will instead use the
485 identity of the message-originating user.
487 This command line option can be used to specify the reverse-path, to be
488 passed to a file-based
490 when a message is sent, via
491 .Fl \&\&f Ar from-addr .
494 include a user name, then the address components will be separated and
495 the name part will be passed to a file-based
501 is also assigned to the internal variable
503 Many default installations and sites disallow explicit overriding of the
504 user identity which could be adjusted by this option, unless either
506 has been configured accordingly, or the user is member of a group with
507 special privileges, respectively.
509 If an empty string is passed as
511 then the content of the variable
513 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
515 will be evaluated and used for this purpose whenever the file-based
518 Note that \*(UA by default, without
520 that is, neither passes
524 command line options to a file-based MTA by itself, unless this
525 automatic deduction is enforced by
527 ing the internal variable
528 .Va r-option-implicit .
532 .It Fl S Ar var Ns Op = Ns value
536 iable and, in case of a non-boolean variable which has a value, assign
540 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
544 may be overwritten from within resource files,
545 the command line setting will be reestablished after all resource files
546 have been loaded in the order they have been given on the command line.
547 (\*(ID In the future such a setting may be in frozen state during startup.)
551 Specify the subject of the message to be sent.
552 Newline (NL) and carriage-return (CR) bytes are invalid and will be
553 normalized to space (SP) characters.
557 The message given (on standard input) is expected to contain, separated
558 from the message body by an empty line, a message header with
563 fields giving its recipients, which will be added to any recipients
564 specified on the command line.
565 If a message subject is specified via
567 then it will be used in favour of one given on the command line.
583 .Ql Mail-Followup-To: ,
584 by default created automatically dependent on message context, will
585 be used if specified (a special address massage will however still occur
587 Any other custom header field (also see
590 is passed through entirely
591 unchanged, and in conjunction with the option
593 it is possible to embed
594 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
602 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
605 appropriate privileges presumed; effectively identical to
606 .Ql Fl \&\&f Ns \0%user .
615 will also show the list of
617 .Ql $ \*(uA -Xversion -Xx .
622 ting the internal variable
624 enables display of some informational context messages.
625 Using it twice increases the level of verbosity.
629 Add the given (or multiple for a multiline argument)
631 to the list of commands to be executed,
632 as a last step of program startup, before normal operation starts.
633 This is the only possibility to execute commands in non-interactive mode
634 when reading startup files is actively prohibited.
635 The commands will be evaluated as a unit, just as via
645 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
646 in compose mode even in non-interactive use cases.
647 This can be used to, e.g., automatically format the composed message
648 text before sending the message:
649 .Bd -literal -offset indent
650 $ ( echo 'line one. Word. Word2.';\e
651 echo '~| /usr/bin/fmt -tuw66' ) |\e
652 LC_ALL=C \*(uA -d~:/ -Sttycharset=utf-8 bob@exam.ple
657 Enables batch mode: standard input is made line buffered, the complete
658 set of (interactive) commands is available, processing of
659 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
660 is enabled in compose mode, and diverse
661 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
662 are adjusted for batch necessities, exactly as if done via
678 The following prepares an email message in a batched dry run:
679 .Bd -literal -offset indent
680 $ LC_ALL=C printf 'm bob\en~s ubject\enText\en~.\enx\en' |\e
681 LC_ALL=C \*(uA -d#:/ -X'alias bob bob@exam.ple'
686 This flag forces termination of option processing in order to prevent
689 It also forcefully puts \*(UA into send mode, see
690 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" .
698 argument, as well as all receivers established by the command line options
702 are subject to checks established via
705 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" .
707 .Op Ar mta-option ...
709 arguments that are given at the end of the command line after a
711 separator will be passed through to a file-based
713 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) and persist for an entire (interactive) session
714 \(en if the setting of the internal variable
716 allows their recognition; no such constraints apply to the variable
720 .\" .Ss "A starter" {{{
723 \*(UA is a direct descendant of
725 Mail, a successor of the Research
728 .Dq was there from the start
731 It thus represents the user side of the
733 mail system, whereas the system side (Mail-Transfer-Agent, MTA) was
734 traditionally taken by
736 and most MTAs provide a binary of this name for compatibility purposes.
741 of \*(UA then the system side is not a mandatory precondition for mail
745 Because \*(UA strives for compliance with POSIX
747 it is likely that some configuration settings have to be adjusted before
748 using it is a smooth experience.
751 resource file bends those standard imposed settings of the
752 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
753 a bit towards more user friendliness and safety, however, e.g., it
758 in order to suppress the automatic moving of messages to the
760 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
762 that would otherwise occur (see
763 .Sx "Message states" ) ,
766 to not remove empty system (MBOX) mailbox files in order not to mangle
767 file permissions when files eventually get recreated \(en
768 \*(UA will remove all empty (MBOX) mailbox files unless this variable is
771 mode has been enabled.
772 The file mode creation mask is explicitly managed via
774 symbolic links will not be followed when opening files for writing,
775 sufficient system support provided.
780 in order to synchronize \*(UA with the exit status report of the used
787 to enter interactive startup even if the initial mailbox is empty,
789 to allow editing of headers as well as
791 to not strip down addresses in compose mode, and
793 to include the message that is being responded to when
798 contains some more complete configuration examples.
801 .\" .Ss "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" {{{
802 .Ss "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode"
804 To send a message to one or more people, using a local or a built-in
806 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) transport to actually deliver the generated mail
807 message, \*(UA can be invoked with arguments which are the names of
808 people to whom the mail will be sent, and the command line options
812 can be used to add (blind) carbon copy receivers:
814 .Bd -literal -offset indent
816 $ \*(uA -s ubject -a ttach.txt bill@exam.ple
818 # But... try it in an isolated dry-run mode (-d) first
819 $ LC_ALL=C \*(uA -d -:/ -Ssendwait -Sttycharset=utf8 \e
820 -b bcc@exam.ple -c cc@exam.ple \e
821 -. '(Lovely) Bob <bob@exam.ple>' eric@exam.ple
824 $ LC_ALL=C \*(uA -d -:/ -Sv15-compat -Ssendwait -Sttycharset=utf8 \e
825 -S mta=smtps://mylogin@exam.ple:465 -Ssmtp-auth=none \e
826 -S from=scriptreply@exam.ple \e
832 If standard input is a terminal rather than the message to be sent,
833 the user is expected to type in the message contents.
834 In this compose mode \*(UA treats lines beginning with the character
836 special \(en these are so-called
837 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" ,
838 which can be used to read in files, process shell commands, add and edit
839 attachments and more; e.g., the command escape
841 will start the text editor to revise the message in its current state,
843 allows editing of the most important message headers, with
845 custom headers can be created (more specifically than with
848 gives an overview of most other available command escapes.
852 at the beginning of an empty line leaves compose mode and causes the
853 message to be sent, whereas typing
856 twice will abort the current letter (saving its contents in the file
867 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
868 can be used to alter default behavior.
869 E.g., messages are sent asynchronously, without supervision, unless the
872 is set, therefore send errors will not be recognizable until then.
877 will automatically startup a text editor when compose mode is entered,
879 allows editing of headers additionally to plain body content, whereas
883 will cause the user to be prompted actively for (blind) carbon-copy
884 recipients, respectively, if the given list is empty.
887 Especially when using public mail provider accounts with the SMTP
889 it is often necessary to set
893 (even finer control via
894 .Va smtp-hostname ) ,
895 which (even if empty) also causes creation of
901 is set; saving a copy of sent messages in a
903 mailbox may be desirable \(en as for most mailbox
905 targets the value will undergo
906 .Sx "Filename transformations" .
909 for the purpose of arranging a complete environment of settings that can
910 be switched to with a single command or command line option may be
913 contains example configurations for sending messages via some of the
914 well-known public mail providers and also gives a compact overview on
915 how to setup a secure SSL/TLS environment).
920 sandbox dry-run tests first will prove correctness.
924 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup"
925 will spread light on the different ways of how to specify user email
926 account credentials, the
928 variable chains, and accessing protocol-specific resources,
931 goes into the details of character encodings, and how to use them for
932 interpreting the input data given in
934 and representing messages and MIME part contents in
936 and reading the section
937 .Sx "The mime.types files"
938 should help to understand how the MIME-type of outgoing attachments are
939 classified, and what can be done for fine-tuning.
940 Over the wire an intermediate, configurable content-transfer-encoding
941 .Pf ( Va mime-encoding )
942 may be applied to the raw message part data.
945 Message recipients (as specified on the command line or defined in
950 may not only be email addressees but can also be names of mailboxes and
951 even complete shell command pipe specifications.
954 is not set then only network addresses (see
956 for a description of mail addresses) and plain user names (including MTA
957 aliases) may be used, other types will be filtered out, giving a warning
961 can be used to generate standard compliant network addresses.
963 .\" When changing any of the following adjust any RECIPIENTADDRSPEC;
964 .\" grep the latter for the complete picture
968 is set then extended recipient addresses will optionally be accepted:
969 Any name which starts with a vertical bar
971 character specifies a command pipe \(en the command string following the
973 is executed and the message is sent to its standard input;
974 Likewise, any name that starts with the character solidus
976 or the character sequence dot solidus
978 is treated as a file, regardless of the remaining content;
979 likewise a name that solely consists of a hyphen-minus
981 Any other name which contains a commercial at
983 character is treated as a network address;
984 Any other name which starts with a plus sign
986 character specifies a mailbox name;
987 Any other name which contains a solidus
989 character but no exclamation mark
993 character before also specifies a mailbox name;
994 What remains is treated as a network address.
996 .Bd -literal -offset indent
997 $ echo bla | \*(uA -Sexpandaddr -s test ./mbox.mbox
998 $ echo bla | \*(uA -Sexpandaddr -s test '|cat >> ./mbox.mbox'
999 $ echo safe | LC_ALL=C \e
1000 \*(uA -:/ -Sv15-compat -Ssendwait -Sttycharset=utf8 \e
1001 -Sexpandaddr=fail,-all,+addr,failinvaddr -s test \e
1006 It is possible to create personal distribution lists via the
1008 command, so that, for instance, the user can send mail to
1010 and have it go to a group of people.
1011 These aliases have nothing in common with the system wide aliases that
1012 may be used by the MTA, which are subject to the
1016 and are often tracked in a file
1022 Personal aliases will be expanded by \*(UA before the message is sent,
1023 and are thus a convenient alternative to specifying each addressee by
1024 itself; they correlate with the active set of
1031 .Dl alias cohorts bill jkf mark kridle@ucbcory ~/mail/cohorts.mbox
1034 .Va on-compose-enter , on-compose-leave
1036 .Va on-compose-cleanup
1037 hook variables may be set to
1039 d macros to automatically adjust some settings dependent
1040 on receiver, sender or subject contexts, and via the
1041 .Va on-compose-splice
1043 .Va on-compose-splice-shell
1044 variables, the former also to be set to a
1046 d macro, increasingly powerful mechanisms to perform automated message
1047 adjustments are available.
1048 (\*(ID These hooks work for commands which newly create messages, namely
1049 .Ic forward , mail , reply
1054 for now provide only the hooks
1057 .Va on-resend-cleanup . )
1060 To avoid environmental noise scripts should
1062 \*(UA from any configuration files and create a script-local
1063 environment, ideally with the command line options
1065 to disable any configuration file in conjunction with repetitions of
1067 to specify variables:
1069 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1070 $ env LC_ALL=C \*(uA -:/ \e
1071 -Sv15-compat -Ssendwait -Sttycharset=utf-8 \e
1072 -Sexpandaddr=fail,-all,failinvaddr \e
1073 -S mta=smtps://mylogin@exam.ple:465 -Ssmtp-auth=login \e
1074 -S from=scriptreply@exam.ple \e
1075 -s 'Subject to go' -a attachment_file \e
1076 -. 'Recipient 1 <rec1@exam.ple>' rec2@exam.ple \e
1081 As shown, scripts can
1083 a locale environment, the above specifies the all-compatible 7-bit clean
1086 but will nonetheless take and send UTF-8 in the message text by using
1088 In interactive mode, which is introduced in the next section, messages
1089 can be sent by calling the
1091 command with a list of recipient addresses:
1093 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1094 $ \*(uA -d -Squiet -Semptystart
1095 "/var/spool/mail/user": 0 messages
1096 ? mail "Recipient 1 <rec1@exam.ple>", rec2@exam.ple
1098 ? # Will do the right thing (tm)
1099 ? m rec1@exam.ple rec2@exam.ple
1103 .\" .Ss "On reading mail, and interactive mode" {{{
1104 .Ss "On reading mail, and interactive mode"
1106 When invoked without addressees \*(UA enters interactive mode in which
1108 When used like that the user's system
1112 for an in-depth description of the different mailbox types that exist)
1113 is read in and a one line header of each message therein is displayed.
1114 The visual style of this summary of
1116 can be adjusted through the variable
1118 and the possible sorting criterion via
1124 can be performed with the command
1126 If the initially opened mailbox is empty \*(UA will instead exit
1127 immediately (after displaying a message) unless the variable
1136 will give a listing of all available commands and
1138 will give a summary of some common ones.
1139 If the \*(OPal documentation strings are available one can type
1142 and see the actual expansion of
1144 and what its purpose is, i.e., commands can be abbreviated
1145 (note that POSIX defines some abbreviations, so that the alphabetical
1146 order of commands does not necessarily relate to the abbreviations; it is
1147 however possible to define overwrites with
1148 .Ic commandalias ) .
1149 These commands can also produce a more
1154 Messages are given numbers (starting at 1) which uniquely identify
1155 messages; the current message \(en the
1157 \(en will either be the first new message, or the first unread message,
1158 or the first message of the mailbox; the internal variable
1160 will instead cause usage of the last message for this purpose.
1165 ful of header summaries containing the
1169 will display only the summaries of the given messages, defaulting to the
1173 Message content can be displayed with the command
1180 controls whether and when \*(UA will use the configured
1182 for display instead of directly writing to the user terminal
1184 the sole difference to the command
1186 which will always use the
1190 will instead only show the first
1192 of a message (maybe even compressed if
1195 Message display experience may improve by setting and adjusting
1196 .Va mime-counter-evidence ,
1198 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" .
1201 By default the current message
1203 is displayed, but like with many other commands it is possible to give
1204 a fancy message specification (see
1205 .Sx "Specifying messages" ) ,
1208 will display all unread messages,
1213 will type the messages 1 and 5,
1215 will type the messages 1 through 5, and
1219 will display the last and the next message, respectively.
1222 (a more substantial alias for
1224 will display a header summary of the given message specification list
1225 instead of their content, e.g., the following will search for subjects:
1228 .Dl from "'@Some subject to search for'"
1231 In the default setup all header fields of a message will be
1233 d, but fields can be white- or blacklisted for a variety of
1234 applications by using the command
1236 e.g., to restrict display to a very restricted set:
1237 .Ql Ic \:headerpick Cd \:type retain Ar \:from to cc subject .
1238 In order to display all header fields of a message regardless of
1239 currently active ignore or retain lists, use the commands
1244 will show the raw message content.
1245 Note that historically the global
1247 not only adjusts the list of displayed headers, but also sets
1251 Dependent upon the configuration a line editor (see the section
1252 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
1253 aims at making user experience with the many
1256 When reading the system
1262 specified a mailbox explicitly prefixed with the special
1264 modifier (propagating the mailbox to a
1266 .Sx "primary system mailbox" ) ,
1267 then messages which have been read will be moved to a
1269 .Sx "secondary mailbox" ,
1272 file, automatically when the mailbox is left, either by changing the
1273 active mailbox or by quitting \*(UA (also see
1274 .Sx "Message states" )
1275 \(en this automatic moving from a system or primary to the secondary
1276 mailbox is not performed when the variable
1279 Messages can also be explicitly
1281 d to other mailboxes, whereas
1283 keeps the original message.
1285 can be used to write out data content of specific parts of messages.
1288 After examining a message the user can
1290 to the sender and all recipients (which will also be placed in
1293 .Va recipients-in-cc
1296 exclusively to the sender(s).
1298 ing a message will allow editing the new message: the original message
1299 will be contained in the message body, adjusted according to
1301 When replying to or forwarding a message recipient addresses will be
1302 stripped from comments and names unless the internal variable
1309 messages: the former will add a series of
1311 headers, whereas the latter will not; different to newly created
1312 messages editing is not possible and no copy will be saved even with
1314 unless the additional variable
1317 Of course messages can also be
1319 but can spring into existence again via
1321 or when the \*(UA session is ended via the
1326 To end a mail processing session one may either issue
1328 to cause a full program exit, which possibly includes
1329 automatic moving of read messages to the
1331 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
1333 as well as updating the \*(OPal line editor
1337 instead in order to prevent any of these actions.
1340 .\" .Ss "HTML mail and MIME attachments" {{{
1341 .Ss "HTML mail and MIME attachments"
1343 Messages which are HTML-only become more and more common and of course
1344 many messages come bundled with a bouquet of MIME (Multipurpose Internet
1345 Mail Extensions) parts for, e.g., attachments.
1346 To get a notion of MIME types, \*(UA will first read
1347 .Sx "The mime.types files"
1348 (as configured and allowed by
1349 .Va mimetypes-load-control ) ,
1350 and then add onto that types registered directly with
1352 It (normally) has a default set of types built-in, too.
1353 To improve interaction with faulty MIME part declarations which are
1354 often seen in real-life messages, setting
1355 .Va mime-counter-evidence
1356 will allow \*(UA to verify the given assertion and possibly provide
1357 an alternative MIME type.
1360 Whereas \*(UA \*(OPally supports a simple HTML-to-text converter for
1361 HTML messages, it cannot handle MIME types other than plain text itself.
1362 Instead programs need to become registered to deal with specific MIME
1363 types or file extensions.
1364 These programs may either prepare plain text versions of their input in
1365 order to enable \*(UA to integrate their output neatlessly in its own
1366 message visualization (a mode which is called
1367 .Cd copiousoutput ) ,
1368 or display the content themselves, for example in an external graphical
1369 window: such handlers will only be considered by and for the command
1373 To install a handler program for a specific MIME type an according
1374 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE
1375 variable needs to be set; to instead define a handler for a specific
1376 file extension the respective
1378 variable can be used \(en these handlers take precedence.
1379 \*(OPally \*(UA supports mail user agent configuration as defined in
1380 RFC 1524; this mechanism (see
1381 .Sx "The Mailcap files" )
1382 will be queried for display or quote handlers if none of the former two
1383 .\" TODO v15-compat "will be" -> "is"
1384 did; it will be the sole source for handlers of other purpose.
1385 A last source for handlers is the MIME type definition itself, when
1386 a (\*(UA specific) type-marker was registered with the command
1388 (which many built-in MIME types do).
1391 E.g., to display a HTML message inline (that is, converted to a more
1392 fancy plain text representation than the built-in converter is capable to
1393 produce) with either of the text-mode browsers
1397 teach \*(UA about MathML documents and make it display them as plain
1398 text, and to open PDF attachments in an external PDF viewer,
1399 asynchronously and with some other magic attached:
1401 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1402 if [ "$features" !@ +filter-html-tagsoup ]
1403 #set pipe-text/html='@* elinks -force-html -dump 1'
1404 set pipe-text/html='@* lynx -stdin -dump -force_html'
1405 # Display HTML as plain text instead
1406 #set pipe-text/html=@
1408 mimetype @ application/mathml+xml mathml
1409 wysh set pipe-application/pdf='@&=@ \e
1410 trap "rm -f \e"${MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}\e"" EXIT;\e
1411 trap "trap \e"\e" INT QUIT TERM; exit 1" INT QUIT TERM;\e
1412 mupdf "${MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}"'
1416 .\" .Ss "Mailing lists" {{{
1419 \*(UA offers some support to ease handling of mailing lists.
1422 promotes all given arguments to known mailing lists, and
1424 sets their subscription attribute, creating them first as necessary.
1429 automatically, but only resets the subscription attribute.)
1430 Using the commands without arguments will show (a subset of) all
1431 currently defined mailing lists.
1436 can be used to mark out messages with configured list addresses
1437 in the header display.
1440 \*(OPally mailing lists may also be specified as (extended) regular
1441 expressions, which allows matching of many addresses with a single
1443 However, all fully qualified list addresses are matched via a fast
1444 dictionary, whereas expressions are placed in (a) list(s) which is
1445 (are) matched sequentially.
1447 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1448 set followup-to followup-to-honour=ask-yes reply-to-honour=ask-yes
1449 wysh mlist a1@b1.c1 a2@b2.c2 '.*@lists\e.c3$'
1450 mlsubscribe a4@b4.c4 exact@lists.c3
1455 .Va followup-to-honour
1457 .Ql Mail-\:Followup-\:To:
1458 header is honoured when the message is being replied to (via
1464 controls whether this header is created when sending mails; it will be
1465 created automatically for a couple of reasons, too, like when the
1467 .Dq mailing list specific
1472 is used to respond to a message with its
1473 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
1477 A difference in between the handling of known and subscribed lists is
1478 that the address of the sender is usually not part of a generated
1479 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
1480 when addressing the latter, whereas it is for the former kind of lists.
1481 Usually because there are exceptions: say, if multiple lists are
1482 addressed and not all of them are subscribed lists.
1484 For convenience \*(UA will, temporarily, automatically add a list
1485 address that is presented in the
1487 header of a message that is being responded to to the list of known
1489 Shall that header have existed \*(UA will instead, dependent on the
1491 .Va reply-to-honour ,
1494 for this purpose in order to accept a list administrators' wish that
1495 is supposed to have been manifested like that (but only if it provides
1496 a single address which resides on the same domain as what is stated in
1500 .\" .Ss "Resource files" {{{
1501 .Ss "Resource files"
1503 Upon startup \*(UA reads in several resource files:
1505 .Bl -tag -width ".It Pa BaNg"
1508 System wide initialization file.
1509 Reading of this file can be suppressed, either by using the
1511 (and according argument) or
1513 command line options, or by setting the
1516 .Ev MAILX_NO_SYSTEM_RC .
1520 File giving initial commands.
1521 A different file can be chosen by setting the
1525 Reading of this file can be suppressed with the
1527 command line option.
1529 .It Va mailx-extra-rc
1530 Can be used to define an optional startup file to be read after all
1531 other resource files.
1532 It can be used to specify settings that are not understood by other
1534 implementations, for example.
1535 This variable is only honoured when defined in a resource file, e.g.,
1537 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" .
1541 The content of these files is interpreted as follows:
1544 .Bl -bullet -compact
1546 The whitespace characters space, tabulator and newline,
1547 as well as those defined by the variable
1549 are removed from the beginning and end of input lines.
1551 Empty lines are ignored.
1553 Any other line is interpreted as a command.
1554 It may be spread over multiple input lines if the newline character is
1556 by placing a reverse solidus character
1558 as the last character of the line; whereas any leading whitespace of
1559 follow lines is ignored, trailing whitespace before a escaped newline
1560 remains in the input.
1562 If the line (content) starts with the number sign
1564 then it is a comment-command \(en a real command! \(en and also ignored.
1565 This command is the only form of comment that is understood.
1569 Unless \*(UA is about to enter interactive mode syntax errors that occur
1570 while loading these files are treated as errors and cause program exit.
1571 More files with syntactically equal content can be
1573 The following, saved in a file, would be an examplary content:
1575 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1576 # This line is a comment command. And y\e
1577 es, it is really continued here.
1584 .\" .Ss "Character sets" {{{
1585 .Ss "Character sets"
1587 \*(OP \*(UA detects the character set of the terminal by using
1588 mechanisms that are controlled by the
1594 in that order; see there) environment variable, the internal variable
1596 will be set to the detected terminal character set accordingly,
1597 and will thus show up in the output of commands like, e.g.,
1603 However, the user may give a value for
1605 during startup, so that it is possible to send mail in a completely
1607 locale environment, an option which can be used to generate and send,
1608 e.g., 8-bit UTF-8 input data in a pure 7-bit US-ASCII
1610 environment (an example of this can be found in the section
1611 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" ) .
1612 Changing the value does not mean much beside that, because several
1613 aspects of the real character set are implied by the locale environment
1614 of the system, which stays unaffected by
1618 If the \*(OPal character set conversion capabilities are not available
1620 does not include the term
1624 will be the only supported character set,
1625 it is simply assumed that it can be used to exchange 8-bit messages
1626 (over the wire an intermediate configurable content-transfer-encoding,
1629 and the rest of this section does not apply;
1630 it may however still be necessary to explicitly set it if automatic
1631 detection fails, since in that case it defaults to
1632 .\" (Keep in SYNC: ./nail.1:"Character sets", ./config.h:CHARSET_*!)
1633 LATIN1 a.k.a. ISO-8859-1.
1636 \*(OP When reading messages, their text is converted into
1638 as necessary in order to display them on the users terminal.
1639 Unprintable characters and invalid byte sequences are detected
1640 and replaced by proper substitution characters.
1641 Character set mappings for source character sets can be established with
1644 which may be handy to work around faulty character set catalogues (e.g.,
1645 to add a missing LATIN1 to ISO-8859-1 mapping), or to enforce treatment
1646 of one character set as another one (e.g., to interpret LATIN1 as CP1252).
1648 .Va charset-unknown-8bit
1649 to deal with another hairy aspect of message interpretation.
1652 When sending messages all their parts and attachments are classified.
1653 Whereas no character set conversion is performed on those parts which
1654 appear to be binary data,
1655 the character set being used must be declared within the MIME header of
1656 an outgoing text part if it contains characters that do not conform to
1657 the set of characters that are allowed by the email standards.
1658 Permissible values for character sets used in outgoing messages can be
1663 which defines a catch-all last-resort fallback character set that is
1664 implicitly appended to the list of character sets in
1668 When replying to a message and the variable
1669 .Va reply-in-same-charset
1670 is set then the character set of the message being replied to is tried
1671 first (after mapping via
1672 .Ic charsetalias ) .
1673 And it is also possible to make \*(UA work even more closely related to
1674 the current locale setting automatically by using the variable
1675 .Va sendcharsets-else-ttycharset ,
1676 please see there for more information.
1679 All the specified character sets are tried in order unless the
1680 conversion of the part or attachment succeeds.
1681 If none of the tried (8-bit) character sets is capable to represent the
1682 content of the part or attachment,
1683 then the message will not be sent and its text will optionally be
1687 In general, if a message saying
1688 .Dq cannot convert from a to b
1689 appears, either some characters are not appropriate for the currently
1690 selected (terminal) character set,
1691 or the needed conversion is not supported by the system.
1692 In the first case, it is necessary to set an appropriate
1694 locale and/or the variable
1698 The best results are usually achieved when \*(UA is run in a UTF-8
1699 locale on an UTF-8 capable terminal, in which case the full Unicode
1700 spectrum of characters is available.
1701 In this setup characters from various countries can be displayed,
1702 while it is still possible to use more simple character sets for sending
1703 to retain maximum compatibility with older mail clients.
1706 On the other hand the POSIX standard defines a locale-independent 7-bit
1707 .Dq portable character set
1708 that should be used when overall portability is an issue, the even more
1709 restricted subset named
1710 .Dq portable filename character set
1711 consists of A-Z, a-z, 0-9, period
1719 .\" .Ss "Message states" {{{
1720 .Ss "Message states"
1722 \*(UA differentiates in between several different message states;
1723 the current state will be reflected in header summary displays if
1725 is configured to do so (via the internal variable
1727 and messages can also be selected and be acted upon depending on their
1729 .Sx "Specifying messages" ) .
1730 When operating on the system
1734 .Sx "primary system mailbox" ,
1735 special actions, like the automatic moving of messages to the
1737 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
1739 may be applied when the mailbox is left (also implicitly via
1740 a successful exit of \*(UA, but not if the special command
1742 is used) \(en however, because this may be irritating to users which
1745 mail-user-agents, the default global
1751 variables in order to suppress this behaviour.
1753 .Bl -hang -width ".It Ql new"
1755 Message has neither been viewed nor moved to any other state.
1756 Such messages are retained even in the
1758 .Sx "primary system mailbox" .
1761 Message has neither been viewed nor moved to any other state, but the
1762 message was present already when the mailbox has been opened last:
1763 Such messages are retained even in the
1765 .Sx "primary system mailbox" .
1768 The message has been processed by one of the following commands:
1787 will always try to automatically
1793 logical message, and may thus mark multiple messages as read, the
1795 command will do so if the internal variable
1800 command is used, messages that are in a
1802 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
1805 state when the mailbox is left will be saved in the
1807 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
1809 unless the internal variable
1814 The message has been processed by one of the following commands:
1820 can be used to access such messages.
1823 The message has been processed by a
1825 command and it will be retained in its current location.
1828 The message has been processed by one of the following commands:
1834 command is used, messages that are in a
1836 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
1839 state when the mailbox is left will be deleted; they will be saved in the
1841 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
1843 when the internal variable
1849 In addition to these message states, flags which otherwise have no
1850 technical meaning in the mail system except allowing special ways of
1851 addressing them when
1852 .Sx "Specifying messages"
1853 can be set on messages.
1854 These flags are saved with messages and are thus persistent, and are
1855 portable between a set of widely used MUAs.
1857 .Bl -hang -width ".It Ic answered"
1859 Mark messages as having been answered.
1861 Mark messages as being a draft.
1863 Mark messages which need special attention.
1867 .\" .Ss "Specifying messages" {{{
1868 .Ss "Specifying messages"
1875 can be given a list of message numbers as arguments to apply to a number
1876 of messages at once.
1879 deletes messages 1 and 2,
1882 will delete the messages 1 through 5.
1883 In sorted or threaded mode (see the
1887 will delete the messages that are located between (and including)
1888 messages 1 through 5 in the sorted/threaded order, as shown in the
1891 The following special message names exist:
1894 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ar BaNg"
1896 The current message, the so-called
1900 The message that was previously the current message.
1903 The parent message of the current message,
1904 that is the message with the Message-ID given in the
1906 field or the last entry of the
1908 field of the current message.
1911 The next previous undeleted message,
1912 or the next previous deleted message for the
1915 In sorted/threaded mode,
1916 the next previous such message in the sorted/threaded order.
1919 The next undeleted message,
1920 or the next deleted message for the
1923 In sorted/threaded mode,
1924 the next such message in the sorted/threaded order.
1927 The first undeleted message,
1928 or the first deleted message for the
1931 In sorted/threaded mode,
1932 the first such message in the sorted/threaded order.
1936 In sorted/threaded mode,
1937 the last message in the sorted/threaded order.
1941 selects the message addressed with
1945 is any other message specification,
1946 and all messages from the thread that begins at it.
1947 Otherwise it is identical to
1952 the thread beginning with the current message is selected.
1957 All messages that were included in the
1958 .Sx "Message list arguments"
1959 of the previous command.
1962 An inclusive range of message numbers.
1963 Selectors that may also be used as endpoints include any of
1968 .Dq any substring matches
1971 header, which will match addresses (too) even if
1973 is set (and POSIX says
1974 .Dq any address as shown in a header summary shall be matchable in this form ) ;
1977 variable is set, only the local part of the address is evaluated
1978 for the comparison, not ignoring case, and the setting of
1980 is completely ignored.
1981 For finer control and match boundaries use the
1985 .It Ar / Ns Ar string
1986 All messages that contain
1988 in the subject field (case ignored).
1995 the string from the previous specification of that type is used again.
1997 .It Xo Op Ar @ Ns Ar name-list Ns
2000 All messages that contain the given case-insensitive search
2002 ession; if the \*(OPal regular expression (see
2004 support is available
2006 will be interpreted as (an extended) one if any of the
2008 (extended) regular expression characters is seen: in this case this
2009 should match strings correctly which are in the locale
2013 .Ar @ Ns Ar name-list
2014 part is missing, the search is restricted to the subject field body,
2017 specifies a comma-separated list of header fields to search, as in
2019 .Dl '@to,from,cc@Someone i ought to know'
2021 In order to search for a string that includes a
2023 (commercial at) character the
2025 is effectively non-optional, but may be given as the empty string.
2026 Some special header fields may be abbreviated:
2040 respectively and case-insensitively.
2045 can be used to search in (all of) the header(s) of the message, and the
2054 can be used to perform full text searches \(en whereas the former
2055 searches only the body, the latter also searches the message header.
2057 This message specification performs full text comparison, but even with
2058 regular expression support it is almost impossible to write a search
2059 expression that savely matches only a specific address domain.
2060 To request that the content of the header is treated as a list of
2061 addresses, and to strip those down to the plain email address which the
2062 search expression is to be matched against, prefix the header name
2063 (abbreviation) with a tilde
2066 .Dl @~f@@a\e.safe\e.domain\e.match$
2069 All messages of state
2073 is one or multiple of the following colon modifiers:
2075 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ar :M"
2080 Old messages (any not in state
2102 messages (cf. the variable
2103 .Va markanswered ) .
2108 \*(OP Messages classified as spam (see
2109 .Sx "Handling spam" . )
2111 \*(OP Messages with unsure spam classification.
2117 \*(OP IMAP-style SEARCH expressions may also be used.
2118 This addressing mode is available with all types of mailbox
2120 s; \*(UA will perform the search locally as necessary.
2121 Strings must be enclosed by double quotes
2123 in their entirety if they contain whitespace or parentheses;
2124 within the quotes, only reverse solidus
2126 is recognized as an escape character.
2127 All string searches are case-insensitive.
2128 When the description indicates that the
2130 representation of an address field is used,
2131 this means that the search string is checked against both a list
2134 .Bd -literal -offset indent
2135 (\*qname\*q \*qsource\*q \*qlocal-part\*q \*qdomain-part\*q)
2140 and the addresses without real names from the respective header field.
2141 These search expressions can be nested using parentheses, see below for
2145 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ar _n_u"
2146 .It Ar ( criterion )
2147 All messages that satisfy the given
2149 .It Ar ( criterion1 criterion2 ... criterionN )
2150 All messages that satisfy all of the given criteria.
2152 .It Ar ( or criterion1 criterion2 )
2153 All messages that satisfy either
2158 To connect more than two criteria using
2160 specifications have to be nested using additional parentheses,
2162 .Ql (or a (or b c)) ,
2166 .Ql ((a or b) and c) .
2169 operation of independent criteria on the lowest nesting level,
2170 it is possible to achieve similar effects by using three separate
2174 .It Ar ( not criterion )
2175 All messages that do not satisfy
2177 .It Ar ( bcc \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2178 All messages that contain
2180 in the envelope representation of the
2183 .It Ar ( cc \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2184 All messages that contain
2186 in the envelope representation of the
2189 .It Ar ( from \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2190 All messages that contain
2192 in the envelope representation of the
2195 .It Ar ( subject \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2196 All messages that contain
2201 .It Ar ( to \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2202 All messages that contain
2204 in the envelope representation of the
2207 .It Ar ( header name \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2208 All messages that contain
2213 .It Ar ( body \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2214 All messages that contain
2217 .It Ar ( text \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2218 All messages that contain
2220 in their header or body.
2221 .It Ar ( larger size )
2222 All messages that are larger than
2225 .It Ar ( smaller size )
2226 All messages that are smaller than
2230 .It Ar ( before date )
2231 All messages that were received before
2233 which must be in the form
2237 denotes the day of the month as one or two digits,
2239 is the name of the month \(en one of
2240 .Ql Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec ,
2243 is the year as four digits, e.g.,
2247 All messages that were received on the specified date.
2248 .It Ar ( since date )
2249 All messages that were received since the specified date.
2250 .It Ar ( sentbefore date )
2251 All messages that were sent on the specified date.
2252 .It Ar ( senton date )
2253 All messages that were sent on the specified date.
2254 .It Ar ( sentsince date )
2255 All messages that were sent since the specified date.
2257 The same criterion as for the previous search.
2258 This specification cannot be used as part of another criterion.
2259 If the previous command line contained more than one independent
2260 criterion then the last of those criteria is used.
2264 .\" .Ss "On URL syntax and credential lookup" {{{
2265 .Ss "On URL syntax and credential lookup"
2267 \*(IN For accessing protocol-specific resources usage of Uniform
2268 Resource Locators (URL, RFC 1738) has become omnipresent.
2269 \*(UA expects and understands URLs in the following form;
2272 denote optional parts, optional either because there also exist other
2273 ways to define the information in question or because support of the
2274 part is protocol-specific (e.g.,
2276 is used by the local maildir and the IMAP protocol, but not by POP3);
2281 are specified they must be given in URL percent encoded form (RFC 3986;
2287 .Dl PROTOCOL://[USER[:PASSWORD]@]server[:port][/path]
2290 Note that these \*(UA URLs most often do not conform to any real
2291 standard, but instead represent a normalized variant of RFC 1738 \(en
2292 they are not used in data exchange but only meant as a compact,
2293 easy-to-use way of defining and representing information in
2294 a well-known notation.
2297 Many internal variables of \*(UA exist in multiple versions, called
2298 variable chains for the rest of this document: the plain
2303 .Ql variable-USER@HOST .
2310 had been specified in the respective URL, otherwise it refers to the plain
2316 that had been found when doing the user chain lookup as is described
2319 will never be in URL percent encoded form, whether it came from an URL
2320 or not; i.e., variable chain name extensions of
2321 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
2322 must not be URL percent encoded.
2325 For example, whether an hypothetical URL
2326 .Ql smtp://hey%3Ayou@our.house
2327 had been given that includes a user, or whether the URL was
2328 .Ql smtp://our.house
2329 and the user had been found differently, to lookup the variable chain
2330 .Va smtp-use-starttls
2331 \*(UA first looks for whether
2332 .Ql smtp-\:use-\:starttls-\:hey:you@our.house
2333 is defined, then whether
2334 .Ql smtp-\:use-\:starttls-\:our.house
2335 exists before finally ending up looking at the plain variable itself.
2338 \*(UA obeys the following logic scheme when dealing with the
2339 necessary credential information of an account:
2345 has been given in the URL the variables
2349 are looked up; if no such variable(s) can be found then \*(UA will,
2350 when enforced by the \*(OPal variables
2351 .Va netrc-lookup-HOST
2358 specific entry which provides a
2360 name: this lookup will only succeed if unambiguous (one possible matching
2363 It is possible to load encrypted
2368 If there is still no
2370 then \*(UA will fall back to the user who is supposed to run \*(UA,
2371 the identity of which has been fixated during \*(UA startup and is
2372 known to be a valid user on the current host.
2375 Authentication: unless otherwise noted this will lookup the
2376 .Va PROTOCOL-auth-USER@HOST , PROTOCOL-auth-HOST , PROTOCOL-auth
2377 variable chain, falling back to a protocol-specific default should this
2383 has been given in the URL, then if the
2385 has been found through the \*(OPal
2387 that may have already provided the password, too.
2388 Otherwise the variable chain
2389 .Va password-USER@HOST , password-HOST , password
2390 is looked up and used if existent.
2392 Afterwards the complete \*(OPal variable chain
2393 .Va netrc-lookup-USER@HOST , netrc-lookup-HOST , netrc-lookup
2397 cache is searched for a password only (multiple user accounts for
2398 a single machine may exist as well as a fallback entry without user
2399 but with a password).
2401 If at that point there is still no password available, but the
2402 (protocols') chosen authentication type requires a password, then in
2403 interactive mode the user will be prompted on the terminal.
2408 S/MIME verification works relative to the values found in the
2412 header field(s), which means that the values of
2413 .Va smime-sign , smime-sign-cert , smime-sign-include-certs
2415 .Va smime-sign-message-digest
2416 will not be looked up using the
2420 chains from above but instead use the corresponding values from the
2421 message that is being worked on.
2422 In unusual cases multiple and different
2426 combinations may therefore be involved \(en on the other hand those
2427 unusual cases become possible.
2428 The usual case is as short as:
2431 .Dl set mta=smtp://USER:PASS@HOST smtp-use-starttls \e
2432 .Dl \ \ \ \ smime-sign smime-sign-cert=+smime.pair
2437 contains complete example configurations.
2440 .\" .Ss "On terminal control and line editor" {{{
2441 .Ss "On terminal control and line editor"
2443 \*(OP Terminal control will be realized through one of the standard
2445 libraries, either the
2447 or, alternatively, the
2449 both of which will be initialized to work with the environment variable
2451 Terminal control will enhance or enable interactive usage aspects, e.g.,
2452 .Sx "Coloured display" ,
2453 and extend behaviour of the Mailx-Line-Editor (MLE), which may learn the
2454 byte-sequences of keys like the cursor and function keys.
2455 The internal variable
2457 can be used to overwrite settings or to learn (correct(ed)) keycodes.
2458 \*(UA may also become a full-screen application by entering the
2459 so-called ca-mode and switching to an alternative \*(UA-exclusive screen
2460 shall the terminal support it and the internal variable
2462 has been set explicitly.
2463 Actual interaction with the chosen library can be disabled completely by
2464 setting the internal variable
2465 .Va termcap-disable ;
2467 will be queried regardless, even if the \*(OPal support for the
2468 libraries has not been enabled at configuration time.
2471 \*(OP The built-in \*(UA Mailx-Line-Editor (MLE) should work in all
2472 environments which comply to the ISO C standard
2474 and will support wide glyphs if possible (the necessary functionality
2475 had been removed from ISO C, but was included in
2477 Prevent usage of a line editor in interactive mode by setting the
2479 .Va line-editor-disable .
2480 Especially if the \*(OPal terminal control support is missing setting
2481 entries in the internal variable
2483 will help shall the MLE misbehave, see there for more.
2484 The MLE can support a little bit of
2490 feature is available then input from line editor prompts will be saved
2491 in a history list that can be searched in and be expanded from.
2492 Such saving can be prevented by prefixing input with any amount of
2494 Aspects of history, like allowed content and maximum size, as well as
2495 whether history shall be saved persistently, can be configured with the
2499 .Va history-gabby-persist
2504 The MLE supports a set of editing and control commands.
2505 By default (as) many (as possible) of these will be assigned to a set of
2506 single-letter control codes, which should work on any terminal (and can
2507 be generated by holding the
2509 key while pressing the key of desire, e.g.,
2513 command is available then the MLE commands can also be accessed freely
2514 by assigning the command name, which is shown in parenthesis in the list
2515 below, to any desired key-sequence, and the MLE will instead and also use
2517 to establish its built-in key bindings
2518 (more of them if the \*(OPal terminal control is available),
2519 an action which can then be suppressed completely by setting
2520 .Va line-editor-no-defaults .
2521 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
2522 notation is used in the following;
2523 combinations not mentioned either cause job control signals or do not
2524 generate a (unique) keycode:
2528 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql Ba"
2530 Go to the start of the line
2532 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-home ) .
2535 Move the cursor backward one character
2537 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-bwd ) .
2540 Forward delete the character under the cursor;
2541 quits \*(UA if used on the empty line unless the internal variable
2545 .Pf ( Cd mle-del-fwd ) .
2548 Go to the end of the line
2550 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-end ) .
2553 Move the cursor forward one character
2555 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-fwd ) .
2558 Cancel current operation, full reset.
2559 If there is an active history search or tabulator expansion then this
2560 command will first reset that, reverting to the former line content;
2561 thus a second reset is needed for a full reset in this case
2563 .Pf ( Cd mle-reset ) .
2566 Backspace: backward delete one character
2568 .Pf ( Cd mle-del-bwd ) .
2572 Horizontal tabulator:
2573 try to expand the word before the cursor, supporting the usual
2574 .Sx "Filename transformations"
2576 .Pf ( Cd mle-complete ) .
2578 .Cd mle-quote-rndtrip .
2582 commit the current line
2584 .Pf ( Cd mle-commit ) .
2587 Cut all characters from the cursor to the end of the line
2589 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-end ) .
2594 .Pf ( Cd mle-repaint ) .
2597 \*(OP Go to the next history entry
2599 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-fwd ) .
2602 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2606 \*(OP Go to the previous history entry
2608 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-bwd ) .
2611 Toggle roundtrip mode shell quotes, where produced,
2614 .Pf ( Cd mle-quote-rndtrip ) .
2615 This setting is temporary, and will be forgotten once the command line
2616 is committed; also see
2620 \*(OP Complete the current line from (the remaining) older history entries
2622 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-srch-bwd ) .
2625 \*(OP Complete the current line from (the remaining) newer history entries
2627 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-srch-fwd ) .
2630 Paste the snarf buffer
2632 .Pf ( Cd mle-paste ) .
2640 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-line ) .
2643 Prompts for a Unicode character (its hexadecimal number) to be inserted
2645 .Pf ( Cd mle-prompt-char ) .
2646 Note this command needs to be assigned to a single-letter control code
2647 in order to become recognized and executed during input of
2648 a key-sequence (only three single-letter control codes can be used for
2649 that shortcut purpose); this control code is special-treated and cannot
2650 be part of any other sequence, because any occurrence will perform the
2652 function immediately.
2655 Cut the characters from the one preceding the cursor to the preceding
2658 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-word-bwd ) .
2661 Move the cursor forward one word boundary
2663 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-word-fwd ) .
2666 Move the cursor backward one word boundary
2668 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-word-bwd ) .
2671 Escape: reset a possibly used multibyte character input state machine
2672 and \*(OPally a lingering, incomplete key binding
2674 .Pf ( Cd mle-cancel ) .
2675 This command needs to be assigned to a single-letter control code in
2676 order to become recognized and executed during input of a key-sequence
2677 (only three single-letter control codes can be used for that shortcut
2679 This control code may also be part of a multi-byte sequence, but if
2680 a sequence is active and the very control code is currently also an
2681 expected input, then it will first be consumed by the active sequence.
2684 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2688 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2692 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2696 Cut the characters from the one after the cursor to the succeeding word
2699 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-word-fwd ) .
2710 this will immediately reset a possibly active search etc.
2715 ring the audible bell.
2719 .\" .Ss "Coloured display" {{{
2720 .Ss "Coloured display"
2722 \*(OP \*(UA can be configured to support a coloured display and font
2723 attributes by emitting ANSI / ISO 6429 SGR (select graphic rendition)
2725 Usage of colours and font attributes solely depends upon the
2726 capability of the detected terminal type that is defined by the
2727 environment variable
2729 and which can be fine-tuned by the user via the internal variable
2733 On top of what \*(UA knows about the terminal the boolean variable
2735 defines whether the actually applicable colour and font attribute
2736 sequences should also be generated when output is going to be paged
2737 through the external program defined by the environment variable
2742 This is not enabled by default because different pager programs need
2743 different command line switches or other configuration in order to
2744 support those sequences.
2745 \*(UA however knows about some widely used pagers and in a clean
2746 environment it is often enough to simply set
2748 please refer to that variable for more on this topic.
2753 is set then any active usage of colour and font attribute sequences
2754 is suppressed, but without affecting possibly established
2759 To define and control colours and font attributes a single multiplexer
2760 command family exists:
2762 shows or defines colour mappings for the given colour type (e.g.,
2765 can be used to remove mappings of a given colour type.
2766 Since colours are only available in interactive mode, it may make
2767 sense to conditionalize the colour setup by encapsulating it with
2770 .Bd -literal -offset indent
2771 if terminal && $features =@ +colour
2772 colour iso view-msginfo ft=bold,fg=green
2773 colour iso view-header ft=bold,fg=red "from,subject"
2774 colour iso view-header fg=red
2776 uncolour iso view-header from,subject
2777 colour iso view-header ft=bold,fg=magenta,bg=cyan
2778 colour 256 view-header ft=bold,fg=208,bg=230 subject,from
2779 colour mono view-header ft=bold
2780 colour mono view-header ft=bold,ft=reverse subject,from
2784 .\" }}} (DESCRIPTION)
2787 .\" .Sh COMMANDS {{{
2790 Each command is typed on a line by itself,
2791 and may take arguments following the command word.
2792 An unquoted reverse solidus
2794 at the end of a command line
2796 the newline character: it is discarded and the next line of input is
2797 used as a follow-up line, with all leading whitespace removed;
2798 once the entire command line is completed, the processing that is
2799 documented in the following, after removal of the whitespace characters
2800 .Cm space , tabulator , newline
2801 as well as those defined by the variable
2803 from the beginning and end of the line, begins.
2804 Placing any whitespace characters at the beginning of a line will
2805 prevent a possible addition of the command line to the \*(OPal history.
2808 Apart from this generic cleanup mechanism \*(UA uses command-specific
2809 syntax rules for command line arguments, documented in the following.
2810 This is a completely different approach to the
2812 ell, which implements a standardized (programming) language, and
2813 performs several successive transformation steps after decomposing the
2814 given command line into tokens following standardized syntax guidelines.
2815 E.g., in the following code snippets of otherwise identical meaning,
2816 a shell will see zero arguments, whereas \*(UA sees one, unless an
2817 additional expansion is explicitly used:
2819 .Bd -literal -offset indent
2820 $ cat > t.sh << '___'; cat > t.rc << '___'
2832 $ sh t.sh; \*(uA -X'source t.rc' -Xx
2839 Command names may be abbreviated, in which case the first command that
2840 matches the given prefix will be used.
2843 can be used to show the list of all commands, either alphabetically
2844 sorted or in prefix search order (these do not match, also because the
2845 POSIX standard prescribes a set of abbreviations).
2846 \*(OPally the command
2850 when given an argument, will show a documentation string for the
2851 command matching the expanded argument, as in
2853 which should be a shorthand of
2855 with these documentation strings both commands support a more
2857 listing mode which includes the argument type of the command and other
2858 information which applies; a handy suggestion might thus be:
2860 .Bd -literal -offset indent
2862 # Before v15: need to enable sh(1)ell-style on _entire_ line!
2863 localopts 1;wysh set verbose;ignerr eval "${@}";return ${?}
2865 ? commandalias xv '\ecall __xv'
2869 .\" .Ss "Command modifiers" {{{
2870 .Ss "Command modifiers"
2872 Commands may be prefixed by one or multiple command modifiers.
2876 The modifier reverse solidus
2879 to be placed first, prevents
2881 expansions on the remains of the line, e.g.,
2883 will always evaluate the command
2885 even if an (command)alias of the same name exists.
2887 content may itself contain further command modifiers, including
2888 an initial reverse solidus to prevent further expansions.
2894 indicates that any error generated by the following command should be
2895 ignored by the state machine and not cause a program exit with enabled
2897 or for the standardized exit cases in
2902 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ,
2903 will be set to the real exit status of the command regardless.
2906 Some commands support the
2909 modifier: if used, they expect the name of a variable, which can itself
2910 be a variable, i.e., shell expansion is applied, as their first
2911 argument, and will place their computation result in it instead of the
2912 default location (it is usually written to standard output).
2914 The given name will be tested for being a valid
2916 variable name, and may therefore only consist of upper- and lowercase
2917 characters, digits, and the underscore; the hyphen-minus may be used as
2918 a non-portable extension; digits may not be used as first, hyphen-minus
2919 may not be used as last characters.
2920 In addition the name may either not be one of the known
2921 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ,
2922 or must otherwise refer to a writable (non-boolean) value variable.
2923 The actual put operation may fail nonetheless, e.g., if the variable
2924 expects a number argument only a number will be accepted.
2925 Any error during these operations causes the command as such to fail,
2926 and the error number
2929 .Va ^ERR Ns -NOTSUP ,
2936 Last, but not least, the modifier
2939 can be used for some old and established commands to choose the new
2940 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
2941 rules over the traditional
2942 .Sx "Old-style argument quoting" .
2946 .\" .Ss "Message list arguments" {{{
2947 .Ss "Message list arguments"
2949 Some commands expect arguments that represent messages (actually
2950 their symbolic message numbers), as has been documented above under
2951 .Sx "Specifying messages"
2953 If no explicit message list has been specified, the next message
2954 forward that satisfies the command's requirements will be used,
2955 and if there are no messages forward of the current message,
2956 the search proceeds backwards;
2957 if there are no good messages at all to be found, an error message is
2958 shown and the command is aborted.
2961 .\" .Ss "Old-style argument quoting" {{{
2962 .Ss "Old-style argument quoting"
2964 \*(ID This section documents the old, traditional style of quoting
2965 non-message-list arguments to commands which expect this type of
2966 arguments: whereas still used by the majority of such commands, the new
2967 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
2968 may be available even for those via
2971 .Sx "Command modifiers" .
2972 Nonetheless care must be taken, because only new commands have been
2973 designed with all the capabilities of the new quoting rules in mind,
2974 which can, e.g., generate control characters.
2977 .Bl -bullet -offset indent
2979 An argument can be enclosed between paired double-quotes
2984 any whitespace, shell word expansion, or reverse solidus characters
2985 (except as described next) within the quotes are treated literally as
2986 part of the argument.
2987 A double-quote will be treated literally within single-quotes and vice
2989 Inside such a quoted string the actually used quote character can be
2990 used nonetheless by escaping it with a reverse solidus
2996 An argument that is not enclosed in quotes, as above, can usually still
2997 contain space characters if those spaces are reverse solidus escaped, as in
3001 A reverse solidus outside of the enclosing quotes is discarded
3002 and the following character is treated literally as part of the argument.
3006 .\" .Ss "Shell-style argument quoting" {{{
3007 .Ss "Shell-style argument quoting"
3009 Commands which don't expect message-list arguments use
3011 ell-style, and therefore POSIX standardized, argument parsing and
3013 \*(ID Most new commands only support these new rules and are flagged
3014 \*(NQ, some elder ones can use them with the command modifier
3016 in the future only this type of argument quoting will remain.
3019 A command line is parsed from left to right and an input token is
3020 completed whenever an unquoted, otherwise ignored, metacharacter is seen.
3021 Metacharacters are vertical bar
3027 as well as all characters from the variable
3030 .Cm space , tabulator , newline .
3031 The additional metacharacters left and right parenthesis
3033 and less-than and greater-than signs
3037 supports are not used, and are treated as ordinary characters: for one
3038 these characters are a vivid part of email addresses, and it seems
3039 highly unlikely that their function will become meaningful to \*(UA.
3041 .Bd -filled -offset indent
3042 .Sy Compatibility note:
3043 \*(ID Please note that even many new-style commands do not yet honour
3045 to parse their arguments: whereas the
3047 ell is a language with syntactic elements of clearly defined semantics,
3048 \*(UA parses entire input lines and decides on a per-command base what
3049 to do with the rest of the line.
3050 This also means that whenever an unknown command is seen all that \*(UA
3051 can do is cancellation of the processing of the remains of the line.
3053 It also often depends on an actual subcommand of a multiplexer command
3054 how the rest of the line should be treated, and until v15 we are not
3055 capable to perform this deep inspection of arguments.
3056 Nonetheless, at least the following commands which work with positional
3057 parameters fully support
3059 for an almost shell-compatible field splitting:
3060 .Ic call , call_if , read , vpospar , xcall .
3064 Any unquoted number sign
3066 at the beginning of a new token starts a comment that extends to the end
3067 of the line, and therefore ends argument processing.
3068 An unquoted dollar sign
3070 will cause variable expansion of the given name, which must be a valid
3072 ell-style variable name (see
3074 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
3077 (shell) variables can be accessed through this mechanism, brace
3078 enclosing the name is supported (i.e., to subdivide a token).
3081 Whereas the metacharacters
3082 .Cm space , tabulator , newline
3083 only complete an input token, vertical bar
3089 also act as control operators and perform control functions.
3090 For now supported is semicolon
3092 which terminates a single command, therefore sequencing the command line
3093 and making the remainder of the line a subject to reevaluation.
3094 With sequencing, multiple command argument types and quoting rules may
3095 therefore apply to a single line, which can become problematic before
3096 v15: e.g., the first of the following will cause surprising results.
3099 .Dl ? echo one; set verbose; echo verbose=$verbose.
3100 .Dl ? echo one; wysh set verbose; echo verbose=$verbose.
3103 Quoting is a mechanism that will remove the special meaning of
3104 metacharacters and reserved words, and will prevent expansion.
3105 There are four quoting mechanisms: the escape character, single-quotes,
3106 double-quotes and dollar-single-quotes:
3109 .Bl -bullet -offset indent
3111 The literal value of any character can be preserved by preceding it
3112 with the escape character reverse solidus
3116 Arguments which are enclosed in
3117 .Ql 'single-\:quotes'
3118 retain their literal value.
3119 A single-quote cannot occur within single-quotes.
3122 The literal value of all characters enclosed in
3123 .Ql \(dqdouble-\:quotes\(dq
3124 is retained, with the exception of dollar sign
3126 which will cause variable expansion, as above, backquote (grave accent)
3128 (which not yet means anything special), reverse solidus
3130 which will escape any of the characters dollar sign
3132 (to prevent variable expansion), backquote (grave accent)
3136 (to prevent ending the quote) and reverse solidus
3138 (to prevent escaping, i.e., to embed a reverse solidus character as-is),
3139 but has no special meaning otherwise.
3142 Arguments enclosed in
3143 .Ql $'dollar-\:single-\:quotes'
3144 extend normal single quotes in that reverse solidus escape sequences are
3145 expanded as follows:
3147 .Bl -tag -compact -width "Ql \eNNN"
3149 bell control character (ASCII and ISO-10646 BEL).
3151 backspace control characer (ASCII and ISO-10646 BS).
3153 escape control character (ASCII and ISO-10646 ESC).
3155 escape control character.
3157 form feed control character (ASCII and ISO-10646 FF).
3159 line feed control character (ASCII and ISO-10646 LF).
3161 carriage return control character (ASCII and ISO-10646 CR).
3163 horizontal tabulator control character (ASCII and ISO-10646 HT).
3165 vertical tabulator control character (ASCII and ISO-10646 VT).
3167 emits a reverse solidus character.
3171 double quote (escaping is optional).
3173 eight-bit byte with the octal value
3175 (one to three octal digits), optionally prefixed by an additional
3177 A 0 byte will suppress further output for the quoted argument.
3179 eight-bit byte with the hexadecimal value
3181 (one or two hexadecimal characters).
3182 A 0 byte will suppress further output for the quoted argument.
3184 the Unicode / ISO-10646 character with the hexadecimal codepoint value
3186 (one to eight hexadecimal digits) \(em note that Unicode defines the
3187 maximum codepoint ever to be supported as
3192 This escape is only supported in locales that support Unicode (see
3193 .Sx "Character sets" ) ,
3194 in other cases the sequence will remain unexpanded unless the given code
3195 point is ASCII compatible or can be represented in the current locale.
3196 The character NUL will suppress further output for the quoted argument.
3200 except it takes only one to four hexadecimal digits.
3202 Emits the non-printable (ASCII and compatible) C0 control codes
3203 0 (NUL) to 31 (US), and 127 (DEL).
3204 Printable representations of ASCII control codes can be created by
3205 mapping them to a different part of the ASCII character set, which is
3206 possible by adding the number 64 for the codes 0 to 31, e.g., 7 (BEL) is
3207 .Ql 7 + 64 = 71 = G .
3208 The real operation is a bitwise logical XOR with 64 (bit 7 set, see
3210 thus also covering code 127 (DEL), which is mapped to 63 (question mark):
3211 .Ql ? vexpr ^ 127 64 .
3213 Whereas historically circumflex notation has often been used for
3214 visualization purposes of control codes, e.g.,
3216 the reverse solidus notation has been standardized:
3218 Some control codes also have standardized (ISO-10646, ISO C) aliases,
3219 as shown above (e.g.,
3223 whenever such an alias exists it will be used for display purposes.
3224 The control code NUL
3226 a non-standard extension) will suppress further output for the remains
3227 of the token (which may extend beyond the current quote), or, depending
3228 on the context, the remains of all arguments for the current command.
3230 Non-standard extension: expand the given variable name, as above.
3231 Brace enclosing the name is supported.
3233 Not yet supported, just to raise awareness: Non-standard extension.
3240 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3241 echo 'Quotes '${HOME}' and 'tokens" differ!"# no comment
3242 echo Quotes ${HOME} and tokens differ! # comment
3243 echo Don"'"t you worry$'\ex21' The sun shines on us. $'\eu263A'
3247 .\" .Ss "Raw data arguments for codec commands" {{{
3248 .Ss "Raw data arguments for codec commands"
3250 A special set of commands, which all have the string
3252 in their name, e.g.,
3256 take raw string data as input, which means that the content of the
3257 command input line is passed completely unexpanded and otherwise
3258 unchanged: like this the effect of the actual codec is visible without
3259 any noise of possible shell quoting rules etc., i.e., the user can input
3260 one-to-one the desired or questionable data.
3261 To gain a level of expansion, the entire command line can be
3265 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3266 ? vput shcodec res encode /usr/Sch\[:o]nes Wetter/heute.txt
3268 $'/usr/Sch\eu00F6nes Wetter/heute.txt'
3270 $'/usr/Sch\eu00F6nes Wetter/heute.txt'
3271 ? eval shcodec d $res
3272 /usr/Sch\[:o]nes Wetter/heute.txt
3276 .\" .Ss "Filename transformations" {{{
3277 .Ss "Filename transformations"
3279 Filenames, where expected, and unless documented otherwise, are
3280 subsequently subject to the following filename transformations, in
3283 .Bl -bullet -offset indent
3285 If the given name is a registered
3287 it will be replaced with the expanded shortcut.
3290 The filename is matched against the following patterns or strings:
3292 .Bl -hang -compact -width ".Ar %user"
3294 (Number sign) is expanded to the previous file.
3296 (Percent sign) is replaced by the invoking
3297 .Mx -ix "primary system mailbox"
3298 user's primary system mailbox, which either is the (itself expandable)
3300 if that is set, the standardized absolute pathname indicated by
3302 if that is set, or a built-in compile-time default otherwise.
3304 Expands to the primary system mailbox of
3306 (and never the value of
3308 regardless of its actual setting).
3310 (Ampersand) is replaced with the invoking users
3311 .Mx -ix "secondary mailbox"
3312 secondary mailbox, the
3319 directory (if that variable is set).
3321 Expands to the same value as
3323 but has special meaning when used with, e.g., the command
3325 the file will be treated as a primary system mailbox by, e.g., the
3329 commands, meaning that messages that have been read in the current
3330 session will be moved to the
3332 mailbox instead of simply being flagged as read.
3336 Meta expansions are applied to the resulting filename, as applicable to
3337 the resulting file access protocol (also see
3338 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" ) .
3339 If the fully expanded filename results in multiple pathnames and the
3340 command is expecting only one file, an error results.
3342 For the file-protocol, a leading tilde
3344 character will be replaced by the expansion of
3346 except when followed by a valid user name, in which case the home
3347 directory of the given user is used instead.
3349 In addition a shell expansion as if specified in double-quotes (see
3350 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting" )
3351 is applied, so that any occurrence of
3355 will be replaced by the expansion of the variable, if possible;
3356 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
3359 (shell) variables can be accessed through this mechanism.
3361 In interactive context, in order to allow simple value acceptance (via
3363 arguments will usually be displayed in a properly quoted form, e.g., a file
3364 .Ql diet\e is \ecurd.txt
3366 .Ql 'diet\e is \ecurd.txt' .
3370 .\" .Ss "Commands" {{{
3373 The following commands are available:
3375 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ic BaNg"
3382 command which follows, replacing unescaped exclamation marks with the
3383 previously executed command if the internal variable
3386 This command supports
3389 .Sx "Command modifiers" ,
3390 and manages the error number
3392 A 0 or positive exit status
3394 reflects the exit status of the command, negative ones that
3395 an error happened before the command was executed, or that the program
3396 did not exit cleanly, but, e.g., due to a signal: the error number is
3397 .Va ^ERR Ns -CHILD ,
3401 In conjunction with the
3403 modifier the following special cases exist:
3404 a negative exit status occurs if the collected data could not be stored
3405 in the given variable, which is a
3407 error that should otherwise not occur.
3408 .Va ^ERR Ns -CANCELED
3409 indicates that no temporary file could be created to collect the command
3410 output at first glance.
3411 In case of catchable out-of-memory situations
3413 will occur and \*(UA will try to store the empty string, just like with
3414 all other detected error conditions.
3419 The comment-command causes the entire line to be ignored.
3421 this really is a normal command which' purpose is to discard its
3424 indicating special character, which means that, e.g., trailing comments
3425 on a line are not possible.
3429 Goes to the next message in sequence and types it
3435 Display the preceding message, or the n'th previous message if given
3436 a numeric argument n.
3440 Show the current message number (the
3445 Show a brief summary of commands.
3446 \*(OP Given an argument a synopsis for the command in question is
3447 shown instead; commands can be abbreviated in general and this command
3448 can be used to see the full expansion of an abbreviation including the
3449 synopsis, try, e.g.,
3454 and see how the output changes.
3455 This mode also supports a more
3457 output, which will provide the informations documented for
3468 .It Ic account , unaccount
3469 (ac, una) Creates, selects or lists (an) account(s).
3470 Accounts are special incarnations of
3472 macros and group commands and variable settings which together usually
3473 arrange the environment for the purpose of creating an email account.
3474 Different to normal macros settings which are covered by
3476 \(en here by default enabled! \(en will not be reverted before the
3481 (case-insensitive) always exists, and all but it can be deleted by the
3482 latter command, and in one operation with the special name
3485 Without arguments a listing of all defined accounts is shown.
3486 With one argument the given account is activated: the system
3488 of that account will be activated (as via
3490 a possibly installed
3492 will be run, and the internal variable
3495 The two argument form is identical to defining a macro as via
3497 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3499 set folder=~/mail inbox=+syste.mbox record=+sent.mbox
3500 set from='(My Name) myname@myisp.example'
3501 set mta=smtp://mylogin@smtp.myisp.example
3508 Perform email address codec transformations on raw-data argument, rather
3509 according to email standards (RFC 5322; \*(ID will furtherly improve).
3513 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) ,
3514 and manages the error number
3516 The first argument must be either
3517 .Ar [+[+[+]]]e[ncode] ,
3521 and specifies the operation to perform on the rest of the line.
3524 Decoding will show how a standard-compliant MUA will display the given
3525 argument, which should be an email address.
3526 Please be aware that most MUAs have difficulties with the address
3527 standards, and vary wildly when (comments) in parenthesis,
3529 strings, or quoted-pairs, as below, become involved.
3530 \*(ID \*(UA currently does not perform decoding when displaying addresses.
3533 Skinning is identical to decoding but only outputs the plain address,
3534 without any string, comment etc. components.
3535 Another difference is that it may fail with the error number
3539 if decoding fails to find a(n) (valid) email address, in which case the
3540 unmodified input will be output again.
3543 Encoding supports four different modes, lesser automated versions can be
3544 chosen by prefixing one, two or three plus signs: the standard imposes
3545 a special meaning on some characters, which thus have to be transformed
3546 to so-called quoted-pairs by pairing them with a reverse solidus
3548 in order to remove the special meaning; this might change interpretation
3549 of the entire argument from what has been desired, however!
3550 Specify one plus sign to remark that parenthesis shall be left alone,
3551 two for not turning double quotation marks into quoted-pairs, and three
3552 for also leaving any user-specified reverse solidus alone.
3553 The result will always be valid, if a successful exit status is reported.
3554 \*(ID Addresses need to be specified in between angle brackets
3557 if the construct becomes more difficult, otherwise the current parser
3558 will fail; it is not smart enough to guess right.
3560 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3561 ? addrc enc "Hey, you",<diet@exam.ple>\e out\e there
3562 "\e"Hey, you\e", \e\e out\e\e there" <diet@exam.ple>
3563 ? addrc d "\e"Hey, you\e", \e\e out\e\e there" <diet@exam.ple>
3564 "Hey, you", \e out\e there <diet@exam.ple>
3565 ? addrc s "\e"Hey, you\e", \e\e out\e\e there" <diet@exam.ple>
3572 .It Ic alias , unalias
3573 (a, una) Aliases are a method of creating personal distribution lists
3574 that map a single alias name to none to multiple real receivers;
3575 these aliases become expanded after message composing is completed.
3576 The latter command removes the given list of aliases, the special name
3578 will discard all existing aliases.
3579 The former command shows all currently defined aliases when used without
3580 arguments, and with one argument the expansion of the given alias.
3581 With more than one argument, creates or appends to the alias name given
3582 as the first argument the remaining arguments.
3583 Alias names are restricted to alphabetic characters, digits, the
3584 underscore, hyphen-minus, the number sign, colon, commercial at and
3585 period, the last character can also be the dollar sign:
3586 .Ql [[:alnum:]_#:@.-]+$? .
3589 .It Ic alternates , unalternates
3590 \*(NQ(alt) Manage a list of alternate addresses or names of the active user,
3591 members of which will be removed from recipient lists.
3592 The latter command removes the given list of alternates, the special name
3594 will discard all existing aliases.
3595 The former command manages the error number
3597 and shows the current set of alternates when used without arguments; in
3598 this mode it supports
3601 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) .
3602 Otherwise the given arguments (after being checked for validity) are
3603 appended to the list of alternate names; in
3605 mode they replace that list instead.
3606 There is a set of implicit alternates which is formed of the values of
3615 .It Ic answered , unanswered
3616 Take a message lists and mark each message as having been answered,
3617 having not been answered, respectively.
3618 Messages will be marked answered when being
3620 to automatically if the
3624 .Sx "Message states" .
3629 .It Ic bind , unbind
3630 \*(OP\*(NQ The bind command extends the MLE (see
3631 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
3632 with freely configurable key bindings.
3633 The latter command removes from the given context the given key binding,
3634 both of which may be specified as a wildcard
3638 will remove all bindings of all contexts.
3639 Due to initialization order unbinding will not work for built-in key
3640 bindings upon program startup, however: please use
3641 .Va line-editor-no-defaults
3642 for this purpose instead.
3645 With one argument the former command shows all key bindings for the
3646 given context, specifying an asterisk
3648 will show the bindings of all contexts; a more verbose listing will be
3649 produced if either of
3654 With two or more arguments a binding is (re)established:
3655 the first argument is the context to which the binding shall apply,
3656 the second argument is a comma-separated list of the
3658 which form the binding, and any remaining arguments form the expansion.
3659 To indicate that a binding shall not be auto-committed, but that the
3660 expansion shall instead be furtherly editable by the user, a commercial at
3662 (that will be removed) can be placed last in the expansion, from which
3663 leading and trailing whitespace will finally be removed.
3664 Reverse solidus cannot be used as the last character of expansion.
3667 Contexts define when a binding applies, i.e., a binding will not be seen
3668 unless the context for which it is defined for is currently active.
3669 This is not true for the shared binding
3671 which is the foundation for all other bindings and as such always
3672 applies, its bindings, however, only apply secondarily.
3673 The available contexts are the shared
3677 context which is used in all not otherwise documented situations, and
3679 which applies to compose mode only.
3683 which form the binding are specified as a comma-separated list of
3684 byte-sequences, where each list entry corresponds to one key(press).
3685 \*(OPally a list entry may, indicated by a leading colon character
3687 also refer to the name of a terminal capability;
3688 several dozen names will be compiled into \*(UA and may be specified
3691 or, if existing, by their
3693 name, regardless of the actually used terminal control library.
3694 It is however possible to use any capability, as long as the name is
3695 resolvable by the control library or defined in the internal variable
3697 Input sequences are not case-normalized, so that an exact match is
3698 required to update or remove a binding.
3701 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3702 bind base $'\eE',d mle-snarf-word-fwd # Esc(ape)
3703 bind base $'\eE',$'\ec?' mle-snarf-word-bwd # Esc, Delete
3704 bind default $'\ecA',:khome,w 'echo An editable binding@'
3705 bind default a,b,c rm -rf / @ # Another editable binding
3706 bind default :kf1 File %
3707 bind compose :kf1 ~e
3711 Note that the entire comma-separated list is first parsed (over) as a
3712 shell-token with whitespace as the field separator, before being parsed
3713 and expanded for real with comma as the field separator, therefore
3714 whitespace needs to be properly quoted, see
3715 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting" .
3716 Using Unicode reverse solidus escape sequences renders a binding
3717 defunctional if the locale does not support Unicode (see
3718 .Sx "Character sets" ) ,
3719 and using terminal capabilities does so if no terminal control support
3720 is (currently) available.
3723 The following terminal capability names are built-in and can be used in
3725 or (if available) the two-letter
3727 notation regardless of the actually used library.
3728 See the respective manual for a list of capabilities.
3731 can be used to show all the capabilities of
3733 or the given terminal type;
3736 flag will also show supported (non-standard) extensions.
3739 .Bl -tag -compact -width kcuuf_or_kcuuf
3740 .It Cd kbs Ns \0or Cd kb
3742 .It Cd kdch1 Ns \0or Cd kD
3744 .It Cd kDC Ns \0or Cd *4
3745 \(em shifted variant.
3746 .It Cd kel Ns \0or Cd kE
3747 Clear to end of line.
3748 .It Cd kext Ns \0or Cd @9
3750 .It Cd kich1 Ns \0or Cd kI
3752 .It Cd kIC Ns \0or Cd #3
3753 \(em shifted variant.
3754 .It Cd khome Ns \0or Cd kh
3756 .It Cd kHOM Ns \0or Cd #2
3757 \(em shifted variant.
3758 .It Cd kend Ns \0or Cd @7
3760 .It Cd knp Ns \0or Cd kN
3762 .It Cd kpp Ns \0or Cd kP
3764 .It Cd kcub1 Ns \0or Cd kl
3765 Left cursor (with more modifiers: see below).
3766 .It Cd kLFT Ns \0or Cd #4
3767 \(em shifted variant.
3768 .It Cd kcuf1 Ns \0or Cd kr
3769 Right cursor (ditto).
3770 .It Cd kRIT Ns \0or Cd %i
3771 \(em shifted variant.
3772 .It Cd kcud1 Ns \0or Cd kd
3773 Down cursor (ditto).
3775 \(em shifted variant (only terminfo).
3776 .It Cd kcuu1 Ns \0or Cd ku
3779 \(em shifted variant (only terminfo).
3780 .It Cd kf0 Ns \0or Cd k0
3782 Add one for each function key up to
3787 .It Cd kf10 Ns \0or Cd k;
3789 .It Cd kf11 Ns \0or Cd F1
3791 Add one for each function key up to
3799 Some terminals support key-modifier combination extensions, e.g.,
3801 For example, the delete key,
3803 in its shifted variant, the name is mutated to
3805 then a number is appended for the states
3817 .Ql Shift+Alt+Control
3819 The same for the left cursor key,
3821 .Cd KLFT , KLFT3 , KLFT4 , KLFT5 , KLFT6 , KLFT7 , KLFT8 .
3824 It is advisable to use an initial escape or other control character (e.g.,
3826 for bindings which describe user key combinations (as opposed to purely
3827 terminal capability based ones), in order to avoid ambiguities whether
3828 input belongs to key sequences or not; it also reduces search time.
3831 may help shall keys and sequences be falsely recognized.
3836 \*(NQ Calls the given macro, which must have been created via
3841 Parameters given to macros are implicitly local to the macro's scope, and
3842 may be accessed via special (positional) parameters, e.g.,
3847 The positional parameters may be removed by
3849 ing them off the stack (exceeding the supported number of arguments
3851 .Va ^ERR Ns -OVERFLOW ) ,
3852 and are otherwise controllable via
3854 Macro execution can be terminated at any time by calling
3857 Calling macros recursively will at some time excess the stack size
3858 limit, causing a hard program abortion; if recursively calling a macro
3859 is the last command of the current macro, consider to use the command
3861 which will first release all resources of the current macro before
3862 replacing the current macro with the called one.
3863 Numeric and string operations can be performed via
3867 may be helpful to recreate argument lists.
3868 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3870 echo Parameter 1 of ${#} is ${1}, all: ${*} / ${@}
3873 call exmac Hello macro exmac!
3880 if the given macro has been created via
3882 but doesn't fail nor warn if the macro doesn't exist.
3886 (ch) Change the working directory to
3888 or the given argument.
3894 \*(OP Only applicable to S/MIME signed messages.
3895 Takes a message list and a filename and saves the certificates
3896 contained within the message signatures to the named file in both
3897 human-readable and PEM format.
3898 The certificates can later be used to send encrypted messages to the
3899 respective message senders by setting
3900 .Va smime-encrypt-USER@HOST
3905 .It Ic charsetalias , uncharsetalias
3906 \*(NQ Manage (character set conversion) character set alias mappings,
3907 as documented in the section
3908 .Sx "Character sets" .
3909 Character set aliases are expanded recursively, but no expansion is
3910 performed on values of the user-settable variables, e.g.,
3912 These are effectively no-operations if character set conversion
3913 is not available (i.e., no
3917 Without arguments the list of all currently defined aliases is shown,
3918 with one argument the expansion of the given alias.
3919 Otherwise all given arguments are treated as pairs of character sets and
3920 their desired target alias name, creating new or changing already
3921 existing aliases, as necessary.
3923 The latter deletes all aliases given as arguments, the special argument
3925 will remove all aliases.
3929 (ch) Change the working directory to
3931 or the given argument.
3937 .It Ic collapse , uncollapse
3938 Only applicable to threaded mode.
3939 Takes a message list and makes all replies to these messages invisible
3940 in header summaries, except for
3944 Also when a message with collapsed replies is displayed,
3945 all of these are automatically uncollapsed.
3946 The latter command undoes collapsing.
3951 .It Ic colour , uncolour
3952 \*(OP\*(NQ Manage colour mappings of and for a
3953 .Sx "Coloured display" .
3954 The type of colour is given as the (case-insensitive) first argument,
3955 which must be one of
3957 for 256-colour terminals,
3962 for the standard 8-colour ANSI / ISO 6429 color palette and
3966 for monochrome terminals.
3967 Monochrome terminals cannot deal with colours, but only (some) font
3971 Without further arguments the list of all currently defined mappings
3972 for the given colour type is shown (as a special case giving
3976 will show the mappings of all types).
3977 Otherwise the second argument defines the mappable slot, and the third
3978 argument a (comma-separated list of) colour and font attribute
3979 specification(s), and the optional fourth argument can be used to
3980 specify a precondition: if conditioned mappings exist they are tested in
3981 (creation) order unless a (case-insensitive) match has been found, and
3982 the default mapping (if any has been established) will only be chosen as
3984 The types of precondition available depend on the mappable slot (see
3985 .Sx "Coloured display"
3986 for some examples), the following of which exist:
3989 Mappings prefixed with
3991 are used for the \*(OPal built-in Mailx-Line-Editor (MLE, see
3992 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
3993 and do not support preconditions.
3995 .Bl -tag -compact -width view-partinfo
3997 This mapping is used for the position indicator that is visible when
3998 a line cannot be fully displayed on the screen.
4005 Mappings prefixed with
4007 are used in header summaries, and they all understand the preconditions
4009 (the current message) and
4011 for elder messages (only honoured in conjunction with
4012 .Va datefield-markout-older ) .
4014 .Bl -tag -compact -width view-partinfo
4016 This mapping is used for the
4018 that can be created with the
4022 formats of the variable
4025 For the complete header summary line except the
4027 and the thread structure.
4029 For the thread structure which can be created with the
4031 format of the variable
4036 Mappings prefixed with
4038 are used when displaying messages.
4040 .Bl -tag -compact -width view-partinfo
4042 This mapping is used for so-called
4044 lines, which are MBOX file format specific header lines.
4047 A comma-separated list of headers to which the mapping applies may be
4048 given as a precondition; if the \*(OPal regular expression support is
4049 available then if any of the
4051 (extended) regular expression characters is seen the precondition will
4052 be evaluated as (an extended) one.
4054 For the introductional message info line.
4055 .It Ar view-partinfo
4056 For MIME part info lines.
4060 The following (case-insensitive) colour definitions and font attributes
4061 are understood, multiple of which can be specified in a comma-separated
4071 It is possible (and often applicable) to specify multiple font
4072 attributes for a single mapping.
4075 foreground colour attribute:
4085 To specify a 256-color mode a decimal number colour specification in
4086 the range 0 to 255, inclusive, is supported, and interpreted as follows:
4088 .Bl -tag -compact -width "999 - 999"
4090 the standard ISO 6429 colors, as above.
4092 high intensity variants of the standard colors.
4094 216 colors in tuples of 6.
4096 grayscale from black to white in 24 steps.
4098 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4100 fg() { printf "\e033[38;5;${1}m($1)"; }
4101 bg() { printf "\e033[48;5;${1}m($1)"; }
4103 while [ $i -lt 256 ]; do fg $i; i=$(($i + 1)); done
4104 printf "\e033[0m\en"
4106 while [ $i -lt 256 ]; do bg $i; i=$(($i + 1)); done
4107 printf "\e033[0m\en"
4111 background colour attribute (see
4113 for possible values).
4119 will remove for the given colour type (the special type
4121 selects all) the given mapping; if the optional precondition argument is
4122 given only the exact tuple of mapping and precondition is removed.
4125 will remove all mappings (no precondition allowed), thus
4127 will remove all established mappings.
4132 .It Ic commandalias , uncommandalias
4133 \*(NQ Define or list, and remove, respectively, command aliases.
4134 An (command)alias can be used everywhere a normal command can be used,
4135 but always takes precedence: any arguments that are given to the command
4136 alias are joined onto the alias expansion, and the resulting string
4137 forms the command line that is, in effect, executed.
4138 The latter command removes all given aliases, the special name
4140 will remove all existing aliases.
4141 When used without arguments the former shows a list of all currently
4142 known aliases, with one argument only the expansion of the given one.
4144 With two or more arguments a command alias is defined or updated: the
4145 first argument is the name under which the remaining command line should
4146 be accessible, the content of which can be just about anything.
4147 An alias may itself expand to another alias, but to avoid expansion loops
4148 further expansion will be prevented if an alias refers to itself or if
4149 an expansion depth limit is reached.
4150 Explicit expansion prevention via reverse solidus
4153 .Sx "Command modifiers" .
4154 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4156 \*(uA: `commandalias': no such alias: xx
4157 ? commandalias xx echo hello,
4159 commandalias xx 'echo hello,'
4168 (C) Copy messages to files whose names are derived from the author of
4169 the respective message and do not mark them as being saved;
4170 otherwise identical to
4175 (c) Copy messages to the named file and do not mark them as being saved;
4176 otherwise identical to
4181 Show the name of the current working directory, as reported by
4186 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) .
4187 The return status is tracked via
4192 \*(OP For unencrypted messages this command is identical to
4194 Encrypted messages are first decrypted, if possible, and then copied.
4198 \*(OP For unencrypted messages this command is identical to
4200 Encrypted messages are first decrypted, if possible, and then copied.
4204 .It Ic define , undefine
4205 Without arguments the current list of macros, including their content,
4206 is shown, otherwise a macro is defined, replacing an existing macro of
4208 A macro definition is a sequence of commands in the following form:
4209 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4218 A defined macro can be invoked explicitly by using the
4222 commands, or implicitly if a macro hook is triggered, e.g., a
4224 It is possible to localize adjustments, like creation, deletion and
4226 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ,
4229 command; the scope which is localized depends on how (i.e.,
4231 normal macro, folder hook, hook,
4233 switch) the macro is invoked.
4234 Execution of a macro body can be stopped from within by calling
4238 ed macro, given positional parameters can be
4242 The latter command deletes the given macro, the special name
4244 will discard all existing macros.
4245 Creation and deletion of (a) macro(s) can be performed from within
4250 .It Ic delete , undelete
4251 (d, u) Marks the given message list as being or not being
4253 respectively; if no argument has been specified then the usual search
4254 for a visible message is performed, as documented for
4255 .Sx "Message list arguments" ,
4256 showing only the next input prompt if the search fails.
4257 Deleted messages will neither be saved in the
4259 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
4261 nor will they be available for most other commands.
4264 variable is set, the new
4266 or the last message restored, respectively, is automatically
4276 Superseded by the multiplexer
4282 Delete the given messages and automatically
4286 if one exists, regardless of the setting of
4293 up or down by one message when given
4297 argument, respectively.
4301 .It Ic draft , undraft
4302 Take message lists and mark each given message as being draft, or not
4303 being draft, respectively, as documented in the section
4304 .Sx "Message states" .
4308 \*(NQ (ec) Echoes arguments to standard output and writes a trailing
4309 newline, whereas the otherwise identical
4312 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
4314 .Sx "Filename transformations"
4315 are applied to the expanded arguments.
4321 except that is echoes to standard error.
4324 In interactive sessions the \*(OPal message ring queue for
4326 will be used instead, if available.
4332 but does not write a trailing newline.
4338 but does not write a trailing newline.
4342 (e) Point the text editor (as defined in
4344 at each message from the given list in turn.
4345 Modified contents are discarded unless the
4347 variable is set, and are not used unless the mailbox can be written to
4348 and the editor returns a successful exit status.
4353 .Ic if Ns \0/\: Ic elif Ns \0/\: Ic else Ns \0/\: Ic endif
4354 conditional \(em if the condition of a preceding
4356 was false, check the following condition and execute the following block
4357 if it evaluates true.
4362 .Ic if Ns \0/\: Ic elif Ns \0/\: Ic else Ns \0/\: Ic endif
4363 conditional \(em if none of the conditions of the preceding
4367 commands was true, the
4373 (en) Marks the end of an
4374 .Ic if Ns \0/\: Ic elif Ns \0/\: Ic else Ns \0/\: Ic endif
4375 conditional execution block.
4380 \*(NQ \*(UA has a strict notion about which variables are
4381 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
4382 and which are managed in the program
4384 Since some of the latter are a vivid part of \*(UAs functioning,
4385 however, they are transparently integrated into the normal handling of
4386 internal variables via
4390 To integrate other environment variables of choice into this
4391 transparent handling, and also to export internal variables into the
4392 process environment where they normally are not, a
4394 needs to become established with this command, as in, e.g.,
4397 .Dl environ link PERL5LIB from TZ
4400 Afterwards changing such variables with
4402 will cause automatic updates of the program environment, and therefore
4403 be inherited by newly created child processes.
4404 Sufficient system support provided (it was in BSD as early as 1987, and
4405 is standardized since Y2K) removing such variables with
4407 will remove them also from the program environment, but in any way
4408 the knowledge they ever have been
4411 Note this implies that
4413 may cause loss of links.
4418 will remove an existing link, but leaves the variables as such intact.
4419 Additionally the subcommands
4423 are provided, which work exactly the same as the documented commands
4427 but (additionally) link the variable(s) with the program environment and
4428 thus immediately export them to, or remove them from (if possible),
4429 respectively, the program environment.
4434 \*(OP Since \*(UA uses the console as a user interface it can happen
4435 that messages scroll by too fast to become recognized.
4436 An error message ring queue is available which stores duplicates of any
4437 error message and notifies the user in interactive sessions whenever
4438 a new error has occurred.
4439 The queue is finite: if its maximum size is reached any new message
4440 replaces the eldest.
4443 can be used to manage this message queue: if given
4445 or no argument the queue will be displayed and cleared,
4447 will only clear all messages from the queue.
4451 \*(NQ Construct a command by concatenating the arguments, separated with
4452 a single space character, and then evaluate the result.
4453 This command passes through the exit status
4457 of the evaluated command; also see
4459 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4470 call yyy '\ecall xxx' "b\e$'\et'u ' "
4478 (ex or x) Exit from \*(UA without changing the active mailbox and skip
4479 any saving of messages in the
4481 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
4483 as well as a possibly tracked line editor history file.
4484 The optional status number argument will be passed through to
4486 \*(ID For now it can happen that the given status will be overwritten,
4487 later this will only occur if a later error needs to be reported onto an
4488 otherwise success indicating status.
4494 but open the mailbox read-only.
4499 (fi) The file command switches to a new mailbox.
4500 Without arguments it shows status information of the current mailbox.
4501 If an argument is given, it will write out changes (such as deletions)
4502 the user has made, open a new mailbox, update the internal variables
4503 .Va mailbox-resolved
4505 .Va mailbox-display ,
4506 and optionally display a summary of
4513 .Sx "Filename transformations"
4514 will be applied to the
4518 prefixes are understood, e.g.,
4519 .Ql maildir:///tmp/mdirbox :
4520 if a protocol prefix is used the mailbox type is fixated and neither
4521 the auto-detection (read on) nor the
4524 \*(OPally URLs can also be used to access network resources, see
4525 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" :
4528 .Dl \*(IN protocol://[user[:password]@]host[:port][/path]
4529 .Dl \*(OU protocol://[user@]host[:port][/path]
4532 \*(OPally supported network protocols are
4536 (POP3 with SSL/TLS encrypted transport),
4538 part is valid only for IMAP; there it defaults to
4540 Network URLs require a special encoding as documented in the said section.
4543 If the resulting file protocol (MBOX database)
4545 is located on a local filesystem then the list of all registered
4547 s is traversed in order to see whether a transparent intermediate
4548 conversion step is necessary to handle the given mailbox, in which case
4549 \*(UA will use the found hook to load and save data into and from
4550 a temporary file, respectively.
4551 Changing hooks will not affect already opened mailboxes.
4552 For example, the following creates hooks for the
4554 compression tool and a combined compressed and encrypted format:
4556 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4558 gzip 'gzip -dc' 'gzip -c' \e
4559 zst.pgp 'gpg -d | zstd -dc' 'zstd -19 -zc | gpg -e'
4563 MBOX database files are generally locked during file operations in order
4564 to avoid inconsistencies due to concurrent modifications.
4565 \*(OPal Mailbox files which \*(UA treats as the system
4570 .Sx "primary system mailbox" Ns
4571 es in general will also be protected by so-called dotlock files, the
4572 traditional way of mail spool file locking: for any file
4576 will be created for the duration of the synchronization \(em
4577 as necessary a privilege-separated dotlock child process will be used
4578 to accommodate for necessary privilege adjustments in order to create
4579 the dotlock file in the same directory
4580 and with the same user and group identities as the file of interest.
4583 \*(UA by default uses tolerant POSIX rules when reading MBOX database
4584 files, but it will detect invalid message boundaries in this mode and
4585 complain (even more with
4587 if any is seen: in this case
4589 can be used to create a valid MBOX database from the invalid input.
4592 If no protocol has been fixated, and
4594 refers to a directory with the subdirectories
4599 then it is treated as a folder in
4602 \*(ID Also, if no protocol has been fixated and no existing file has
4603 been found, the variable
4605 controls the format of mailboxes yet to be created.
4610 .It Ic filetype , unfiletype
4611 \*(NQ Define or list, and remove, respectively, file handler hooks,
4612 which provide (shell) commands that enable \*(UA to load and save MBOX
4613 files from and to files with the registered file extensions;
4614 it will use an intermediate temporary file to store the plain data.
4615 The latter command removes the hooks for all given extensions,
4617 will remove all existing handlers.
4619 When used without arguments the former shows a list of all currently
4620 defined file hooks, with one argument the expansion of the given alias.
4621 Otherwise three arguments are expected, the first specifying the file
4622 extension for which the hook is meant, and the second and third defining
4623 the load- and save commands, respectively, to deal with the file type,
4624 both of which must read from standard input and write to standard
4626 Changing hooks will not affect already opened mailboxes (\*(ID except below).
4627 \*(ID For now too much work is done, and files are oftened read in twice
4628 where once would be sufficient: this can cause problems if a filetype is
4629 changed while such a file is opened; this was already so with the
4630 built-in support of .gz etc. in Heirloom, and will vanish in v15.
4631 \*(ID For now all handler strings are passed to the
4632 .Ev SHELL for evaluation purposes; in the future a
4634 prefix to load and save commands may mean to bypass this shell instance:
4635 placing a leading space will avoid any possible misinterpretations.
4636 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4637 filetype bz2 'bzip2 -dc' 'bzip2 -zc' \e
4638 gz 'gzip -dc' 'gzip -c' xz 'xz -dc' 'xz -zc' \e
4639 zst 'zstd -dc' 'zstd -19 -zc' \e
4640 zst.pgp 'gpg -d | zstd -dc' 'zstd -19 -zc | gpg -e'
4641 set record=+sent.zst.pgp
4646 .It Ic flag , unflag
4647 Take message lists and mark the messages as being flagged, or not being
4648 flagged, respectively, for urgent/special attention.
4650 .Sx "Message states" .
4659 With no arguments, list the names of the folders in the folder directory.
4660 With an existing folder as an argument,
4661 lists the names of folders below the named folder.
4667 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the first
4668 recipient's address (instead of in
4675 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the first
4676 recipient's address (instead of in
4683 but responds to all recipients regardless of the
4688 .It Ic followupsender
4691 but responds to the sender only regardless of the
4699 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the
4700 recipient's address (instead of in
4705 Takes a message and the address of a recipient
4706 and forwards the message to him.
4707 The text of the original message is included in the new one,
4708 with the value of the
4709 .Va forward-header-inject
4710 variable preceding it.
4711 To filter the included header fields to the desired subset use the
4713 slot of the white- and blacklisting command
4715 Only the first part of a multipart message is included unless
4716 .Va forward-as-attachment ,
4717 and recipient addresses will be stripped from comments, names etc.
4718 unless the internal variable
4724 (f) Takes a list of message specifications and displays a summary of
4725 their message headers, exactly as via
4727 An alias of this command is
4730 .Sx "Specifying messages" .
4741 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
4745 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
4748 .It Ic ghost , unghost
4751 .Ic uncommandalias .
4755 .It Ic headerpick , unheaderpick
4756 \*(NQ Multiplexer command to manage white- and blacklisting
4757 selections of header fields for a variety of applications.
4758 Without arguments the set of contexts that have settings is displayed.
4759 When given arguments, the first argument is the context to which the
4760 command applies, one of (case-insensitively)
4762 for display purposes (via, e.g.,
4765 for selecting which headers shall be stored persistently when
4771 ing messages (note that MIME related etc. header fields should not be
4772 ignored in order to not destroy usability of the message in this case),
4774 for stripping down messages when
4776 ing message (has no effect if
4777 .Va forward-as-attachment
4780 for defining user-defined set of fields for the command
4784 The current settings of the given context are displayed if only the
4785 first argument is given.
4786 A second argument denotes the type of restriction that is to be chosen,
4787 it may be (a case-insensitive prefix of)
4791 for white- and blacklisting purposes, respectively.
4792 Establishing a whitelist suppresses inspection of the corresponding
4794 If no further argument is given the current settings of the given type
4795 will be displayed, otherwise the remaining arguments specify header
4796 fields, which \*(OPally may be given as regular expressions, to be be
4797 added to the given type.
4798 The special wildcard field (asterisk,
4800 will establish a (fast) shorthand setting which covers all fields.
4802 The latter command always takes three or more arguments and can be used
4803 to remove fields from the given type of list of the given context, the
4806 will remove all fields.
4811 (h) Show the current group of headers, the size of which depends on
4814 and the style of which can be adjusted with the variable
4816 If a message-specification is given the group of headers containing the
4817 first message therein is shown and the message at the top of the screen
4830 (this mode also supports a more
4834 the list of history entries;
4837 argument selects and evaluates the respective history entry,
4838 which will become the new history top; a negative number is used as an
4839 offset to the current command, e.g.,
4841 will select the last command, the history top.
4842 The default mode if no arguments are given is
4849 Takes a message list and marks each message therein to be saved in the
4854 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
4856 Does not override the
4859 \*(UA deviates from the POSIX standard with this command, because a
4861 command issued after
4863 will display the following message, not the current one.
4868 (i) Part of the nestable
4869 .Ic if Ns \0/\: Ic elif Ns \0/\: Ic else Ns \0/\: Ic endif
4870 conditional execution construct \(em if the given condition is true then
4871 the encapsulated block is executed.
4872 The POSIX standards supports the (case-insensitive) conditions
4877 end, all remaining conditions are non-portable extensions.
4878 (Be aware that a faulty condition skips all following branches until
4880 \*(ID These commands do not yet use
4881 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
4882 and therefore do not know about input tokens, so that syntax
4883 elements have to be surrounded by whitespace; in v15 \*(UA will inspect
4884 all conditions bracket group wise and consider the tokens, representing
4885 values and operators, therein, which also means that variables will
4886 already have been expanded at that time (just like in the shell).
4888 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4897 The (case-insensitive) condition
4899 erminal will evaluate to true if the standard input is a terminal, i.e.,
4900 in interactive sessions.
4901 Another condition can be any boolean value (see the section
4902 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
4903 for textual boolean representations) to mark an enwrapped block as
4906 .Dq always execute .
4910 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
4911 will be used, and this command will simply interpret expanded tokens.)
4912 It is possible to check
4913 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
4916 variables for existence or compare their expansion against a user given
4917 value or another variable by using the
4919 .Pf ( Dq variable next )
4920 conditional trigger character;
4921 a variable on the right hand side may be signalled using the same
4923 Variable names may be enclosed in a pair of matching braces.
4924 When this mode has been triggered, several operators are available:
4927 Integer operators treat the arguments on the left and right hand side of
4928 the operator as integral numbers and compare them arithmetically.
4929 It is an error if any of the operands is not a valid integer, an empty
4930 argument (which implies it had been quoted) is treated as if it were 0.
4931 Available operators are
4935 (less than or equal to),
4941 (greater than or equal to), and
4946 String data operators compare the left and right hand side according to
4947 their textual content.
4948 Unset variables are treated as the empty string.
4949 The behaviour of string operators can be adjusted by prefixing the
4950 operator with the modifier trigger commercial at
4952 followed by none to multiple modifiers: for now supported is
4954 which turns the comparison into a case-insensitive one: this is
4955 implied if no modifier follows the trigger.
4958 Available string operators are
4962 (less than or equal to),
4968 (greater than or equal to),
4972 (is substring of) and
4974 (is not substring of).
4975 By default these operators work on bytes and (therefore) do not take
4976 into account character set specifics.
4977 If the case-insensitivity modifier has been used, case is ignored
4978 according to the rules of the US-ASCII encoding, i.e., bytes are
4982 When the \*(OPal regular expression support is available, the additional
4988 They treat the right hand side as an extended regular expression that is
4989 matched according to the active locale (see
4990 .Sx "Character sets" ) ,
4991 i.e., character sets should be honoured correctly.
4994 Conditions can be joined via AND-OR lists (where the AND operator is
4996 and the OR operator is
4998 which have equal precedence and will be evaluated with left
4999 associativity, thus using the same syntax that is known for the
5001 It is also possible to form groups of conditions and lists by enclosing
5002 them in pairs of brackets
5003 .Ql [\ \&.\&.\&.\ ] ,
5004 which may be interlocked within each other, and also be joined via
5008 The results of individual conditions and entire groups may be modified
5009 via unary operators: the unary operator
5011 will reverse the result.
5013 .Bd -literal -offset indent
5017 if [ "$ttycharset" == UTF-8 ] || [ "$ttycharset" @i== UTF8 ]
5018 echo *ttycharset* is UTF-8, the former case-sensitive!
5021 if [ "${t1}" == "${t2}" ]
5022 echo These two variables are equal
5024 # This is a string test, -ge has been added for v14.9.0
5025 if [ "$features" =% +regex ] && [ "$TERM" @i=~ "^xterm\&.*" ]
5026 echo ..in an X terminal
5028 if [ [ true ] && [ [ "${debug}" != '' ] || \e
5029 [ "$verbose" != '' ] ] ]
5032 if true && [ "$debug" != '' ] || [ "${verbose}" != '' ]
5033 echo Left associativity, as is known from the shell
5035 if ! ! true && ! [ ! "$debug" && ! "$verbose" ]
5036 echo Unary operator support
5045 Superseded by the multiplexer
5050 Shows the names of all available commands, alphabetically sorted.
5051 If given any non-whitespace argument the list will be shown in the order
5052 in which command prefixes are searched.
5053 \*(OP In conjunction with a set variable
5055 additional information will be provided for each command: the argument
5056 type will be indicated, the documentation string will be shown,
5057 and the set of command flags will show up:
5059 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql BaNg"
5060 .It Ql "vput modifier"
5061 command supports the command modifier
5063 .It Ql "errno in *!*"
5064 the error number is tracked in
5067 commands needs an active mailbox, a
5069 .It Ql "ok: batch or interactive"
5070 command may only be used in interactive or
5073 .It Ql "ok: send mode"
5074 command can be used in send mode.
5075 .It Ql "not ok: compose mode"
5076 command is not available when in compose mode.
5077 .It Ql "not ok: during startup"
5078 command cannot be used during program startup, e.g., while loading
5079 .Sx "Resource files" .
5080 .It Ql "ok: in subprocess"
5081 command is allowed to be used when running in a subprocess instance,
5082 e.g., from within a macro that is called via
5083 .Va on-compose-splice .
5088 This command can be used to localize changes to variables, meaning that
5089 their state will be reverted to the former one once the covered scope
5091 It can only be used inside of macro definition blocks introduced by
5095 and is interpreted as a boolean (string, see
5096 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ) ;
5099 of an account is left once it is switched off again.
5100 .Bd -literal -offset indent
5101 define temporary_settings {
5102 set possibly_global_option1
5107 set possibly_global_option2
5116 enables change localization and calls
5118 which explicitly resets localization, then any value changes within
5120 will still be reverted by
5122 \*(ID Once the outermost level, the one which enabled localization
5123 first, is left, but no earlier, all adjustments will be unrolled.
5124 \*(ID Likewise worth knowing, if in this example
5126 changes to a different
5128 which sets some variables that are yet covered by localizations, their
5129 scope will be extended, and in fact leaving the
5131 will (thus) restore settings in (likely) global scope which actually
5132 were defined in a local, private context.
5136 Reply to messages that come in via known
5139 .Pf ( Ic mlsubscribe )
5140 mailing lists, or pretend to do so (see
5141 .Sx "Mailing lists" ) :
5144 functionality this will actively resort and even remove message
5145 recipients in order to generate a message that is supposed to be sent to
5147 For example it will also implicitly generate a
5148 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
5149 header if that seems useful, regardless of the setting of the variable
5151 For more documentation please refer to
5152 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" .
5158 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the first
5159 recipient's address (instead of in
5164 (m) Takes a (list of) recipient address(es) as (an) argument(s),
5165 or asks on standard input if none were given;
5166 then collects the remaining mail content and sends it out.
5167 For more documentation please refer to
5168 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" .
5172 (mb) The given message list is to be sent to the
5174 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
5176 when \*(UA is quit; this is the default action unless the variable
5179 \*(ID This command can only be used in a
5181 .Sx "primary system mailbox" .
5185 .It Ic mimetype , unmimetype
5186 Without arguments the content of the MIME type cache will displayed;
5187 a more verbose listing will be produced if either of
5192 When given arguments they will be joined, interpreted as shown in
5193 .Sx "The mime.types files"
5195 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" ) ,
5196 and the resulting entry will be added (prepended) to the cache.
5197 In any event MIME type sources are loaded first as necessary \(en
5198 .Va mimetypes-load-control
5199 can be used to fine-tune which sources are actually loaded.
5201 The latter command deletes all specifications of the given MIME type, thus
5202 .Ql ? unmimetype text/plain
5203 will remove all registered specifications for the MIME type
5207 will discard all existing MIME types, just as will
5209 but which also reenables cache initialization via
5210 .Va mimetypes-load-control .
5214 .It Ic mlist , unmlist
5215 The latter command removes all given mailing-lists, the special name
5217 can be used to remove all registered lists.
5218 The former will list all currently defined mailing lists (and their
5219 attributes, if any) when used without arguments; a more verbose listing
5220 will be produced if either of
5225 Otherwise all given arguments will be added and henceforth be recognized
5227 If the \*(OPal regular expression support is available then mailing
5228 lists may also be specified as (extended) regular expressions (see
5234 \*(ID Only available in interactive mode, this command allows to display
5235 MIME parts which require external MIME handler programs to run which do
5236 not integrate in \*(UAs normal
5239 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" ) .
5240 (\*(ID No syntax to directly address parts, this restriction may vanish.)
5241 The user will be asked for each non-text part of the given message in
5242 turn whether the registered handler shall be used to display the part.
5246 .It Ic mlsubscribe , unmlsubscribe
5247 The latter command removes the subscription attribute from all given
5248 mailing-lists, the special name
5250 can be used to do so for any registered list.
5251 The former will list all currently defined mailing lists which have
5252 a subscription attribute when used without arguments; a more verbose
5253 listing will be produced if either of
5258 Otherwise this attribute will be set for all given mailing lists,
5259 newly creating them as necessary (as via
5268 but moves the messages to a file named after the local part of the
5269 sender address of the first message (instead of in
5276 but marks the messages for deletion if they were transferred
5283 but also displays header fields which would not pass the
5285 selection, and all MIME parts.
5293 on the given messages, even in non-interactive mode and as long as the
5294 standard output is a terminal.
5300 \*(OP When used without arguments or if
5302 has been given the content of the
5304 cache is shown, loading it first as necessary.
5307 then the cache will only be initialized and
5309 will remove its contents.
5310 Note that \*(UA will try to load the file only once, use
5311 .Ql Ic \&\&netrc Ns \:\0\:clear
5312 to unlock further attempts.
5317 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" ;
5319 .Sx "The .netrc file"
5320 documents the file format in detail.
5324 Checks for new mail in the current folder without committing any changes
5326 If new mail is present, a message is shown.
5330 the headers of each new message are also shown.
5331 This command is not available for all mailbox types.
5339 Goes to the next message in sequence and types it.
5340 With an argument list, types the next matching message.
5354 If the current folder is accessed via a network connection, a
5356 command is sent, otherwise no operation is performed.
5362 but also displays header fields which would not pass the
5364 selection, and all MIME parts.
5372 on the given messages, even in non-interactive mode and as long as the
5373 standard output is a terminal.
5381 but also pipes header fields which would not pass the
5383 selection, and all parts of MIME
5384 .Ql multipart/alternative
5389 (pi) Takes a message list and a shell command
5390 and pipes the messages through the command.
5391 Without an argument the current message is piped through the command
5398 every message is followed by a formfeed character.
5419 (q) Terminates the session, saving all undeleted, unsaved messages in
5422 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
5424 preserving all messages marked with
5428 or never referenced in the system
5430 and removing all other messages from the
5432 .Sx "primary system mailbox" .
5433 If new mail has arrived during the session,
5435 .Dq You have new mail
5437 If given while editing a mailbox file with the command line option
5439 then the edit file is rewritten.
5440 A return to the shell is effected,
5441 unless the rewrite of edit file fails,
5442 in which case the user can escape with the exit command.
5443 The optional status number argument will be passed through to
5445 \*(ID For now it can happen that the given status will be overwritten,
5446 later this will only occur if a later error needs to be reported onto an
5447 otherwise success indicating status.
5451 \*(NQ Read a line from standard input, or the channel set active via
5453 and assign the data, which will be splitted as indicated by
5455 to the given variables.
5456 The variable names are checked by the same rules as documented for
5458 and the same error codes will be seen in
5462 indicates the number of bytes read, it will be
5464 with the error number
5468 in case of I/O errors, or
5471 If there are more fields than variables, assigns successive fields to the
5472 last given variable.
5473 If there are less fields than variables, assigns the empty string to the
5475 .Bd -literal -offset indent
5478 ? echo "<$a> <$b> <$c>"
5480 ? wysh set ifs=:; read a b c;unset ifs
5481 hey2.0,:"'you ",:world!:mars.:
5482 ? echo $?/$^ERRNAME / <$a><$b><$c>
5483 0/NONE / <hey2.0,><"'you ",><world!:mars.:><><>
5488 \*(NQ Manages input channels for
5490 to be used to avoid complicated or impracticable code, like calling
5492 from within a macro in non-interactive mode.
5493 Without arguments, or when the first argument is
5495 a listing of all known channels is printed.
5496 Channels can otherwise be
5498 d, and existing channels can be
5502 d by giving the string used for creation.
5504 The channel name is expected to be a file descriptor number, or,
5505 if parsing the numeric fails, an input file name that undergoes
5506 .Sx "Filename transformations" .
5507 E.g. (this example requires a modern shell):
5508 .Bd -literal -offset indent
5509 $ LC_ALL=C printf 'echon "hey, "\enread a\enyou\enecho $a' |\e
5512 $ LC_ALL=C printf 'echon "hey, "\enread a\enecho $a' |\e
5513 LC_ALL=C 6<<< 'you' \*(uA -R#X'readctl create 6'
5527 Removes the named files or directories.
5528 If a name refer to a mailbox, e.g., a Maildir mailbox, then a mailbox
5529 type specific removal will be performed, deleting the complete mailbox.
5530 The user is asked for confirmation in interactive mode.
5534 Takes the name of an existing folder
5535 and the name for the new folder
5536 and renames the first to the second one.
5537 Both folders must be of the same type.
5541 (R) Replies to only the sender of each message of the given message
5542 list, by using the first message as the template to quote, for the
5546 will exchange this command with
5548 Unless the internal variable
5550 is set the recipient address will be stripped from comments, names etc.
5554 (r) Take a message and group-responds to it by addressing the sender
5555 and all recipients, subject to
5559 .Va followup-to-honour ,
5562 .Va recipients-in-cc
5563 influence response behaviour.
5564 Unless the internal variable
5566 is set recipient addresses will be stripped from comments, names etc.
5576 offers special support for replying to mailing lists.
5577 For more documentation please refer to
5578 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" .
5584 but initiates a group-reply regardless of the value of
5591 but responds to the sender only regardless of the value of
5598 but does not add any header lines.
5599 This is not a way to hide the sender's identity,
5600 but useful for sending a message again to the same recipients.
5604 Takes a list of messages and a user name
5605 and sends each message to the named user.
5607 and related header fields are prepended to the new copy of the message.
5610 is only performed if
5630 .It Ic respondsender
5636 (ret) Superseded by the multiplexer
5641 Only available inside the scope of a
5645 this will stop evaluation of any further macro content, and return
5646 execution control to the caller.
5647 The two optional parameters must be specified as positive decimal
5648 numbers and default to the value 0:
5649 the first argument specifies the signed 32-bit return value (stored in
5651 and later extended to signed 64-bit),
5652 the second the signed 32-bit error number (stored in
5656 a non-0 exit status may cause the program to exit.
5662 but saves the messages in a file named after the local part of the
5663 sender of the first message instead of (in
5665 and) taking a filename argument; the variable
5667 is inspected to decide on the actual storage location.
5671 (s) Takes a message list and a filename and appends each message in turn
5672 to the end of the file.
5673 If no filename is given, the
5675 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
5678 The filename in quotes, followed by the generated character count
5679 is echoed on the user's terminal.
5682 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
5683 the messages are marked for deletion.
5684 .Sx "Filename transformations"
5688 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
5692 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
5696 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
5701 Takes a message specification (list) and displays a header summary of
5702 all matching messages, as via
5704 This command is an alias of
5707 .Sx "Specifying messages" .
5711 Takes a message list and marks all messages as having been read.
5717 (se, \*(NQ uns) The latter command will delete all given variables,
5718 the former, when used without arguments, will show all variables which
5719 are currently known to \*(UA; this will not automatically link-in
5721 variables which are known to \*(UA even if they exist in the program
5722 environment: only explicit addressing of variables, e.g., via
5724 using a variable in a
5726 condition or a string passed to
5728 or via program-internal use cases will perform this task.
5729 A more verbose listing will be produced if
5737 Otherwise the given variables (and arguments) are set or adjusted.
5738 Arguments are of the form
5740 (no space before or after
5744 if there is no value, i.e., a boolean variable.
5745 \*(ID In conjunction with the
5748 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
5749 can be used to quote arguments as necessary.
5750 \*(ID Otherwise quotation marks may be placed around any part of the
5751 assignment statement to quote blanks or tabs.
5754 .Dl wysh set indentprefix=' -> '
5757 If an argument begins with
5761 the effect is the same as invoking the
5763 command with the remaining part of the variable
5764 .Pf ( Ql unset save ) .
5769 that is known to map to an environment variable will automatically cause
5770 updates in the program environment (unsetting a variable in the
5771 environment requires corresponding system support) \(em use the command
5773 for further environmental control.
5778 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
5785 Apply shell quoting rules to the given raw-data arguments.
5789 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) ,
5790 The first argument specifies the operation:
5794 cause shell quoting to be applied to the remains of the line, and
5795 expanded away thereof, respectively.
5796 If the former is prefixed with a plus-sign, the quoted result will not
5797 be roundtrip enabled, and thus can be decoded only in the very same
5798 environment that was used to perform the encode; also see
5799 .Cd mle-quote-rndtrip .
5800 If the coding operation fails the error number
5803 .Va ^ERR Ns -CANCELED ,
5804 and the unmodified input is used as the result; the error number may
5805 change again due to output or result storage errors.
5809 (sh) Invokes an interactive version of the shell,
5810 and returns its exit status.
5814 .It Ic shortcut , unshortcut
5815 Without arguments the list of all currently defined shortcuts is
5816 shown, with one argument the expansion of the given shortcut.
5817 Otherwise all given arguments are treated as pairs of shortcuts and
5818 their expansions, creating new or changing already existing shortcuts,
5820 The latter command will remove all given shortcuts, the special name
5822 will remove all registered shortcuts.
5826 Shift the positional parameter stack (starting at
5828 by the given number (which must be an unsigned, positive, decimal),
5829 or 1 if no argument has been given.
5830 It is an error if the value exceeds the number of positional parameters.
5831 If the given number is 0, no action is performed, successfully.
5832 The stack as such can be managed via
5834 Note this command will fail in
5836 and hook macros unless the positional parameter stack has been
5837 explicitly created in the current context via
5844 but performs neither MIME decoding nor decryption, so that the raw
5845 message text is shown.
5849 (si) Shows the size in characters of each message of the given
5854 \*(NQ Sleep for the specified number of seconds (and optionally
5855 milliseconds), by default interruptably.
5856 If a third argument is given the sleep will be uninterruptible,
5857 otherwise the error number
5861 if the sleep has been interrupted.
5862 The command will fail and the error number will be
5863 .Va ^ERR Ns -OVERFLOW
5864 if the given duration(s) overflow the time datatype, and
5866 if the given durations are no valid integers.
5871 .It Ic sort , unsort
5872 The latter command disables sorted or threaded mode, returns to normal
5873 message order and, if the
5876 displays a header summary.
5877 The former command shows the current sorting criterion when used without
5878 an argument, but creates a sorted representation of the current folder
5879 otherwise, and changes the
5881 command and the addressing modes such that they refer to messages in
5883 Message numbers are the same as in regular mode.
5887 a header summary in the new order is also displayed.
5888 Automatic folder sorting can be enabled by setting the
5890 variable, as in, e.g.,
5891 .Ql set autosort=thread .
5892 Possible sorting criterions are:
5895 .Bl -tag -compact -width "subject"
5897 Sort the messages by their
5899 field, that is by the time they were sent.
5901 Sort messages by the value of their
5903 field, that is by the address of the sender.
5906 variable is set, the sender's real name (if any) is used.
5908 Sort the messages by their size.
5910 \*(OP Sort the message by their spam score, as has been classified by
5913 Sort the messages by their message status.
5915 Sort the messages by their subject.
5917 Create a threaded display.
5919 Sort messages by the value of their
5921 field, that is by the address of the recipient.
5924 variable is set, the recipient's real name (if any) is used.
5930 \*(NQ (so) The source command reads commands from the given file.
5931 .Sx "Filename transformations"
5933 If the given expanded argument ends with a vertical bar
5935 then the argument will instead be interpreted as a shell command and
5936 \*(UA will read the output generated by it.
5937 Interpretation of commands read is stopped when an error is encountered.
5940 cannot be used from within macros that execute as
5941 .Va folder-hook Ns s
5944 i.e., it can only be called from macros that were
5949 \*(NQ The difference to
5951 (beside not supporting pipe syntax aka shell command input) is that
5952 this command will not generate an error nor warn if the given file
5953 argument cannot be opened successfully.
5957 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and clears their
5963 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and causes the
5965 to forget it has ever used them to train its Bayesian filter.
5966 Unless otherwise noted the
5968 flag of the message is inspected to chose whether a message shall be
5976 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and informs the Bayesian filter of the
5980 This also clears the
5982 flag of the messages in question.
5986 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and rates them using the configured
5987 .Va spam-interface ,
5988 without modifying the messages, but setting their
5990 flag as appropriate; because the spam rating headers are lost the rate
5991 will be forgotten once the mailbox is left.
5992 Refer to the manual section
5994 for the complete picture of spam handling in \*(UA.
5998 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and sets their
6004 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and informs the Bayesian filter of the
6010 flag of the messages in question.
6026 slot for white- and blacklisting header fields.
6030 (to) Takes a message list and types out the first
6032 lines of each message on the users' terminal.
6033 Unless a special selection has been established for the
6037 command, the only header fields that are displayed are
6048 It is possible to apply compression to what is displayed by setting
6050 Messages are decrypted and converted to the terminal character set
6055 (tou) Takes a message list and marks the messages for saving in the
6057 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
6059 \*(UA deviates from the POSIX standard with this command,
6062 command will display the following message instead of the current one.
6068 but also displays header fields which would not pass the
6070 selection, and all visualizable parts of MIME
6071 .Ql multipart/alternative
6076 (t) Takes a message list and types out each message on the users terminal.
6077 The display of message headers is selectable via
6079 For MIME multipart messages, all parts with a content type of
6081 all parts which have a registered MIME type handler (see
6082 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" )
6083 which produces plain text output, and all
6085 parts are shown, others are hidden except for their headers.
6086 Messages are decrypted and converted to the terminal character set
6090 can be used to display parts which are not displayable as plain text.
6133 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
6137 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
6142 Superseded by the multiplexer
6153 .It Ic unmlsubscribe
6164 Takes a message list and marks each message as not having been read.
6168 Superseded by the multiplexer
6172 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
6176 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
6198 Perform URL percent codec operations on the raw-data argument, rather
6199 according to RFC 3986.
6203 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) ,
6204 and manages the error number
6206 This is a character set agnostic and thus locale dependent operation,
6207 and it may decode bytes which are invalid in the current
6209 \*(ID This command does not about URLs beside that.
6211 The first argument specifies the operation:
6215 perform plain URL percent en- and decoding, respectively.
6219 perform a slightly modified operation which should be better for
6220 pathnames: it does not allow a tilde
6222 and will neither accept hyphen-minus
6226 as an initial character.
6227 The remains of the line form the URL data which is to be converted.
6228 If the coding operation fails the error number
6231 .Va ^ERR Ns -CANCELED ,
6232 and the unmodified input is used as the result; the error number may
6233 change again due to output or result storage errors.
6237 \*(NQ Edit the values of or create the given variable(s) in the
6239 Boolean variables cannot be edited, and variables can also not be
6245 \*(NQ This command produces the same output as the listing mode of
6249 ity adjustments, but only for the given variables.
6253 \*(OP Takes a message list and verifies each message.
6254 If a message is not a S/MIME signed message,
6255 verification will fail for it.
6256 The verification process checks if the message was signed using a valid
6258 if the message sender's email address matches one of those contained
6259 within the certificate,
6260 and if the message content has been altered.
6273 \*(NQ Evaluate arguments according to a given operator.
6274 This is a multiplexer command which can be used to perform signed 64-bit
6275 numeric calculations as well as byte string and string operations.
6276 It uses polish notation, i.e., the operator is the first argument and
6277 defines the number and type, and the meaning of the remaining arguments.
6278 An empty argument is replaced with a 0 if a number is expected.
6282 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) .
6285 The result that is shown in case of errors is always
6287 for usage errors and numeric operations, and the empty string for byte
6288 string and string operations;
6289 if the latter two fail to provide result data for
6291 errors, e.g., when a search operation failed, they also set the
6294 .Va ^ERR Ns -NODATA .
6295 Except when otherwise noted numeric arguments are parsed as signed 64-bit
6296 numbers, and errors will be reported in the error number
6298 as the numeric error
6299 .Va ^ERR Ns -RANGE .
6302 Numeric operations work on one or two signed 64-bit integers.
6303 One integer is expected by assignment (equals sign
6305 which does nothing but parsing the argument, thus detecting validity and
6306 possible overflow conditions, and unary not (tilde
6308 which creates the bitwise complement.
6309 Two integers are used by addition (plus sign
6311 subtraction (hyphen-minus
6313 multiplication (asterisk
6317 and modulo (percent sign
6319 as well as for the bitwise operators logical or (vertical bar
6322 bitwise and (ampersand
6325 bitwise xor (circumflex
6327 the bitwise signed left- and right shifts
6330 as well as for the unsigned right shift
6334 All numeric operators can be suffixed with a commercial at
6338 this will turn the operation into a saturated one, which means that
6339 overflow errors and division and modulo by zero are no longer reported
6340 via the exit status, but the result will linger at the minimum or
6341 maximum possible value, instead of overflowing (or trapping).
6342 This is true also for the argument parse step.
6343 For the bitwise shifts, the saturated maximum is 63.
6344 Any catched overflow will be reported via the error number
6347 .Va ^ERR Ns -OVERFLOW .
6350 Character set agnostic string functions have no notion of locale
6351 settings and character sets.
6354 which performs the usual
6355 .Sx "Filename transformations"
6356 on its argument, and
6358 which generates a random string of the given length, or of
6360 bytes (a constant from
6362 if the value 0 is given; the random string will be base64url encoded
6363 according to RFC 4648, and thus be usable as a (portable) filename.
6366 Byte string operations work on 8-bit bytes and have no notion of locale
6367 settings and character sets, effectively assuming ASCII data.
6368 Operations that take one argument are
6370 which queries the length of the given argument, and
6372 which calculates the Chris Torek hash of the given argument.
6375 Byte string operations with two or more arguments are
6377 which byte-searches in the first for the second argument, and shows the
6378 resulting 0-based offset shall it have been found,
6380 which is identical to
6382 but works case-insensitively according to the rules of the ASCII
6385 will show a substring of its first argument:
6386 the second argument is the 0-based starting offset, the optional third
6387 argument can be used to specify the length of the desired substring,
6388 by default the entire string is used;
6389 this operation tries to work around faulty arguments (set
6391 for error logs), but reports them via the error number
6394 .Va ^ERR Ns -OVERFLOW .
6397 String operations work, sufficient support provided, according to the
6398 active user's locale encoding and character set (see
6399 .Sx "Character sets" ) .
6400 There is the one argument operation
6402 which (one-way) converts the argument to something safely printable on
6408 is a string operation that will try to match the first argument with the
6409 regular expression given as the second argument, as does
6411 but which is case-insensitive.
6412 If the optional third argument has been given then instead of showing
6413 the match offset a replacement operation is performed:
6414 the third argument is treated as if specified via dollar-single-quote
6416 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting" ) ,
6417 and any occurrence of a positional parameter, e.g.,
6419 is replaced by the corresponding match group of the regular expression.
6421 .Bd -literal -offset indent
6422 ? vexpr -@ +1 -9223372036854775808
6423 ? vput vexpr res ir bananarama (.*)NanA(.*) '\e${1}au\e$2'
6430 \*(NQ Manage the positional parameter stack (see
6434 If the first argument is
6436 then the positional parameter stack of the current context, or the
6437 global one, if there is none, is cleared.
6440 then the remaining arguments will be used to (re)create the stack,
6441 if the parameter stack size limit is excessed an
6442 .Va ^ERR Ns -OVERFLOW
6446 If the first argument is
6448 a round-trip capable representation of the stack contents is created,
6449 with each quoted parameter separated from each other with the first
6452 and followed by the first character of
6454 if that is not empty and not identical to the first.
6455 If that results in no separation at all a
6461 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) .
6462 I.e., the subcommands
6466 can be used (in conjunction with
6468 to (re)create an argument stack from and to a single variable losslessly.
6470 .Bd -literal -offset indent
6471 ? vpospar set hey, "'you ", world!
6472 ? echo $#: <${1}><${2}><${3}>
6473 ? vput vpospar x quote
6475 ? echo $#: <${1}><${2}><${3}>
6476 ? eval vpospar set ${x}
6477 ? echo $#: <${1}><${2}><${3}>
6483 (v) Takes a message list and invokes the display editor on each message.
6484 Modified contents are discarded unless the
6486 variable is set, and are not used unless the mailbox can be written to
6487 and the editor returns a successful exit status.
6491 (w) For conventional messages the body without all headers is written.
6492 The original message is never marked for deletion in the originating
6494 The output is decrypted and converted to its native format as necessary.
6495 If the output file exists, the text is appended.
6496 If a message is in MIME multipart format its first part is written to
6497 the specified file as for conventional messages, handling of the remains
6498 depends on the execution mode.
6499 No special handling of compressed files is performed.
6501 In interactive mode the user is consecutively asked for the filenames of
6502 the processed parts.
6503 For convience saving of each part may be skipped by giving an empty
6504 value, the same result as writing it to
6506 Shell piping the part content by specifying a leading vertical bar
6508 character for the filename is supported.
6509 Other user input undergoes the usual
6510 .Sx "Filename transformations" ,
6511 and contents of the destination file are overwritten if the file
6514 \*(ID In non-interactive mode any part which does not specify a filename
6515 is ignored, and suspicious parts of filenames of the remaining parts are
6516 URL percent encoded (as via
6518 to prevent injection of malicious character sequences, resulting in
6519 a filename that will be written into the current directory.
6520 Existing files will not be overwritten, instead the part number or
6521 a dot are appended after a number sign
6523 to the name until file creation succeeds (or fails due to other
6528 \*(NQ The sole difference to
6530 is that the new macro is executed in place of the current one, which
6531 will not regain control; all resources of the current macro will be
6532 released before control is given to the replacer.
6533 Note this implies that
6535 may become cleaned up if the teared down macro context is the outermost
6536 level of the cleanup stack.
6537 If this command is not used from within a
6539 ed macro it will silently be (a more expensive variant of)
6549 \*(NQ \*(UA presents message headers in
6551 fuls as described under the
6554 Without arguments this command scrolls to the next window of messages,
6555 likewise if the argument is
6559 scrolls to the last,
6561 scrolls to the first, and
6566 A number argument prefixed by
6570 indicates that the window is calculated in relation to the current
6571 position, and a number without a prefix specifies an absolute position.
6577 but scrolls to the next or previous window that contains at least one
6587 .\" .Sh COMMAND ESCAPES {{{
6588 .Sh "COMMAND ESCAPES"
6590 Here is a summary of the command escapes available in compose mode,
6591 which are used to perform special functions when composing messages.
6592 Command escapes are only recognized at the beginning of lines, and
6593 consist of a trigger (escape) and a command character.
6594 The actual escape character can be set via the internal variable
6596 it defaults to the tilde
6598 Otherwise ignored whitespace characters following the escape character
6599 will prevent a possible addition of the command line to the \*(OPal
6603 Unless otherwise noted all compose mode commands ensure proper updates
6604 of the variables which represent the error number
6610 is set they will, unless stated otherwise, error out message compose
6611 mode if an operation fails.
6612 It is however possible to place the character hyphen-minus
6614 after (possible whitespace following) the escape character, which has an
6615 effect equivalent to the command modifier
6619 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ic BaNg"
6622 Insert the string of text in the message prefaced by a single
6624 (If the escape character has been changed,
6625 that character must be doubled instead.)
6628 .It Ic ~! Ar command
6629 Execute the indicated shell
6631 which follows, replacing unescaped exclamation marks with the previously
6632 executed command if the internal variable
6634 is set, then return to the message.
6638 Same effect as typing the end-of-file character.
6641 .It Ic ~: Ar \*(UA-command Ns \0or Ic ~_ Ar \*(UA-command
6642 Execute the given \*(UA command.
6643 Not all commands, however, are allowed.
6647 Write a summary of command escapes.
6650 .It Ic ~< Ar filename
6655 .It Ic ~<! Ar command
6657 is executed using the shell.
6658 Its standard output is inserted into the message.
6661 .It Ic ~@ Op Ar filename...
6662 Append or edit the list of attachments.
6663 Does not manage the error number
6669 instead if this is a concern).
6672 arguments is expected as shell tokens (see
6673 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting" ;
6674 any token-separating commas are ignored), to be
6675 interpreted as documented for the command line option
6677 with the message number exception as below.
6680 arguments the attachment list is edited, entry by entry;
6681 if a filename is left empty, that attachment is deleted from the list;
6682 once the end of the list is reached either new attachments may be
6683 entered or the session can be quit by committing an empty
6686 For each mode, if a given filename solely consists of the number sign
6688 followed by a valid message number of the currently active mailbox, then
6689 the given message is attached as a MIME
6691 part (the number sign is the shell comment character and must be quoted).
6695 Inserts the string contained in the
6698 .Ql Ic ~i Ns \0Sign ) .
6699 \*(OB The escape sequences tabulator
6703 are understood (use the
6707 ting the variable(s) instead).
6711 Inserts the string contained in the
6714 .Ql Ic ~i Ns \0sign ) .
6715 \*(OB The escape sequences tabulator
6719 are understood (use the
6723 ting the variable(s) instead).
6726 .It Ic ~b Ar name ...
6727 Add the given names to the list of blind carbon copy recipients.
6730 .It Ic ~c Ar name ...
6731 Add the given names to the list of carbon copy recipients.
6735 Read the file specified by the
6737 variable into the message.
6741 Invoke the text editor on the message collected so far.
6742 After the editing session is finished,
6743 the user may continue appending text to the message.
6746 .It Ic ~F Ar messages
6747 Read the named messages into the message being sent, including all
6748 message headers and MIME parts.
6749 If no messages are specified, read in the current message.
6752 .It Ic ~f Ar messages
6753 Read the named messages into the message being sent.
6754 If no messages are specified, read in the current message.
6755 Strips down the list of header fields according to the
6757 white- and blacklist selection of
6759 For MIME multipart messages,
6760 only the first displayable part is included.
6764 Edit the message header fields
6769 by typing each one in turn and allowing the user to edit the field.
6770 The default values for these fields originate from the
6778 Edit the message header fields
6784 by typing each one in turn and allowing the user to edit the field.
6787 .It Ic ~i Ar variable
6788 Insert the value of the specified variable into the message,
6789 adding a newline character at the end.
6790 The message remains unaltered if the variable is unset or empty.
6791 \*(OB The escape sequences tabulator
6795 are understood (use the
6799 ting the variable(s) instead).
6802 .It Ic ~M Ar messages
6803 Read the named messages into the message being sent,
6806 If no messages are specified, read the current message, the
6810 .It Ic ~m Ar messages
6811 Read the named messages into the message being sent,
6814 If no messages are specified, read the current message.
6815 Strips down the list of header fields according to the
6817 white- and blacklist selection of
6819 For MIME multipart messages,
6820 only the first displayable part is included.
6824 Display the message collected so far,
6825 prefaced by the message header fields
6826 and followed by the attachment list, if any.
6830 Abort the message being sent,
6831 copying it to the file specified by the
6838 .It Ic ~R Ar filename
6841 but indent each line that has been read by
6845 .It Ic ~r Ar filename Op Ar HERE-delimiter
6846 Read the named file, object to the usual
6847 .Sx "Filename transformations" ,
6848 into the message; if (the expanded)
6852 then standard input is used, e.g., for pasting purposes.
6853 Only in this latter mode
6855 may be given: if it is data will be read in until the given
6857 is seen on a line by itself, and encountering EOF is an error; the
6859 is a required argument in non-interactive mode; if it is single-quote
6860 quoted then the pasted content will not be expanded, \*(ID otherwise
6861 a future version of \*(UA may perform shell-style expansion on the content.
6865 Cause the named string to become the current subject field.
6866 Newline (NL) and carriage-return (CR) bytes are invalid and will be
6867 normalized to space (SP) characters.
6870 .It Ic ~t Ar name ...
6871 Add the given name(s) to the direct recipient list.
6874 .It Ic ~U Ar messages
6875 Read in the given / current message(s) excluding all headers, indented by
6879 .It Ic ~u Ar messages
6880 Read in the given / current message(s), excluding all headers.
6884 Invoke an alternate editor (defined by the
6886 environment variable) on the message collected so far.
6887 Usually, the alternate editor will be a screen editor.
6888 After the editor is quit,
6889 the user may resume appending text to the end of the message.
6892 .It Ic ~w Ar filename
6893 Write the message onto the named file, which is object to the usual
6894 .Sx "Filename transformations" .
6896 the message is appended to it.
6902 except that the message is not saved at all.
6905 .It Ic ~| Ar command
6906 Pipe the message through the specified filter command.
6907 If the command gives no output or terminates abnormally,
6908 retain the original text of the message.
6911 is often used as a rejustifying filter.
6915 .It Ic ~^ Ar cmd Op Ar subcmd Op Ar arg3 Op Ar arg4
6916 Low-level command meant for scripted message access, i.e., for
6917 .Va on-compose-splice-shell
6919 .Va on-compose-splice .
6920 The used protocol is likely subject to changes, and therefore the
6921 mentioned hooks receive the used protocol version as an initial line.
6922 In general the first field of a response line represents a status code
6923 which specifies whether a command was successful or not, whether result
6924 data is to be expected, and if, the format of the result data.
6925 Does not manage the error number
6929 because errors are reported via the protocol
6930 (hard errors like I/O failures cannot be handled).
6931 This command has read-only access to several virtual pseudo headers in
6932 the \*(UA private namespace, which may not exist (except for the first):
6936 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Va BaNg"
6937 .It Ql Mailx-Command:
6938 The name of the command that generates the message, one of
6944 .It Ql Mailx-Raw-To:
6945 .It Ql Mailx-Raw-Cc:
6946 .It Ql Mailx-Raw-Bcc:
6947 Represent the frozen initial state of these headers before any
6948 transformation (e.g.,
6951 .Va recipients-in-cc
6954 .It Ql Mailx-Orig-From:
6955 .It Ql Mailx-Orig-To:
6956 .It Ql Mailx-Orig-Cc:
6957 .It Ql Mailx-Orig-Bcc:
6958 The values of said headers of the original message which has been
6960 .Ic reply , forward , resend .
6964 The status codes are:
6968 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql _210_"
6970 Status ok; the remains of the line are the result.
6973 Status ok; the rest of the line is optionally used for more status.
6974 What follows are lines of result addresses, terminated by an empty line.
6975 The address lines consist of two fields, the first of which is the
6976 plain address, e.g.,
6978 separated by a single ASCII SP space from the second which contains the
6979 unstripped address, even if that is identical to the first field, e.g.,
6980 .Ql (Lovely) Bob <bob@exam.ple> .
6981 (All the input, including the empty line, must be consumed before
6982 further commands can be issued.)
6985 Status ok; the rest of the line is optionally used for more status.
6986 What follows are lines of furtherly unspecified string content,
6987 terminated by an empty line.
6989 including the empty line, must be consumed before further commands can
6993 Syntax error; invalid command.
6996 Syntax error in parameters or arguments.
6999 Error: an argument fails verification.
7000 For example an invalid address has been specified, or an attempt was
7001 made to modify anything in \*(UAs own namespace.
7004 Error: an otherwise valid argument is rendered invalid due to context.
7005 For example, a second address is added to a header which may consist of
7006 a single address only.
7011 If a command indicates failure then the message will have remained
7013 Most commands can fail with
7015 if required arguments are missing (false command usage).
7016 The following (case-insensitive) commands are supported:
7019 .Bl -hang -width ".It Cm header"
7021 This command allows listing, inspection, and editing of message headers.
7022 Header name case is not normalized, and case-insensitive comparison
7023 should be used when matching names.
7024 The second argument specifies the subcommand to apply, one of:
7026 .Bl -hang -width ".It Cm remove"
7028 Without a third argument a list of all yet existing headers is given via
7030 this command is the default command of
7032 if no second argument has been given.
7033 A third argument restricts output to the given header only, which may
7036 if no such field is defined.
7039 Shows the content of the header given as the third argument.
7040 Dependent on the header type this may respond with
7044 any failure results in
7048 This will remove all instances of the header given as the third
7053 if no such header can be found, and
7055 on \*(UA namespace violations.
7058 This will remove from the header given as the third argument the
7059 instance at the list position (counting from one!) given with the fourth
7064 if the list position argument is not a number or on \*(UA namespace
7067 if no such header instance exists.
7070 Create a new or an additional instance of the header given in the third
7071 argument, with the header body content as given in the fourth argument
7072 (the remains of the line).
7075 if the third argument specifies a free-form header field name that is
7076 invalid, or if body content extraction fails to succeed,
7078 if any extracted address does not pass syntax and/or security checks or
7079 on \*(UA namespace violations, and
7081 to indicate prevention of excessing a single-instance header \(em note that
7083 can be appended to (a space separator will be added automatically first).
7086 is returned upon success, followed by the name of the header and the list
7087 position of the newly inserted instance.
7088 The list position is always 1 for single-instance header fields.
7089 All free-form header fields are managed in a single list.
7094 This command allows listing, removal and addition of message attachments.
7095 The second argument specifies the subcommand to apply, one of:
7097 .Bl -hang -width ".It Cm remove"
7099 List all attachments via
7103 if no attachments exist.
7104 This command is the default command of
7106 if no second argument has been given.
7109 This will remove the attachment given as the third argument, and report
7113 if no such attachment can be found.
7114 If there exists any path component in the given argument, then an exact
7115 match of the path which has been used to create the attachment is used
7116 directly, but if only the basename of that path matches then all
7117 attachments are traversed to find an exact match first, and the removal
7118 occurs afterwards; if multiple basenames match, a
7121 Message attachments are treated as absolute pathnames.
7123 If no path component exists in the given argument, then all attachments
7124 will be searched for
7126 parameter matches as well as for matches of the basename of the path
7127 which has been used when the attachment has been created; multiple
7132 This will interpret the third argument as a number and remove the
7133 attachment at that list position (counting from one!), reporting
7137 if the argument is not a number or
7139 if no such attachment exists.
7142 Adds the attachment given as the third argument, specified exactly as
7143 documented for the command line option
7145 and supporting the message number extension as documented for
7149 upon success, with the index of the new attachment following,
7151 if the given file cannot be opened,
7153 if an on-the-fly performed character set conversion fails, otherwise
7155 is reported; this is also reported if character set conversion is
7156 requested but not available.
7159 This uses the same search mechanism as described for
7161 and prints any known attributes of the first found attachment via
7165 if no such attachment can be found.
7166 The attributes are written as lines of keyword and value tuples, the
7167 keyword being separated from the rest of the line with an ASCII SP space
7171 This uses the same search mechanism as described for
7173 and is otherwise identical to
7176 .It Cm attribute-set
7177 This uses the same search mechanism as described for
7179 and will assign the attribute given as the fourth argument, which is
7180 expected to be a value tuple of keyword and other data, separated by
7181 a ASCII SP space or TAB tabulator character.
7182 If the value part is empty, then the given attribute is removed, or
7183 reset to a default value if existence of the attribute is crucial.
7187 upon success, with the index of the found attachment following,
7189 for message attachments or if the given keyword is invalid, and
7191 if no such attachment can be found.
7192 The following keywords may be used (case-insensitively):
7194 .Bl -hang -compact -width ".It Ql filename"
7196 Sets the filename of the MIME part, i.e., the name that is used for
7197 display and when (suggesting a name for) saving (purposes).
7198 .It Ql content-description
7199 Associate some descriptive information to the attachment's content, used
7200 in favour of the plain filename by some MUAs.
7202 May be used for uniquely identifying MIME entities in several contexts;
7203 this expects a special reference address format as defined in RFC 2045
7206 upon address content verification failure.
7208 Defines the media type/subtype of the part, which is managed
7209 automatically, but can be overwritten.
7210 .It Ql content-disposition
7211 Automatically set to the string
7215 .It Cm attribute-set-at
7216 This uses the same search mechanism as described for
7218 and is otherwise identical to
7228 .\" .Sh INTERNAL VARIABLES {{{
7229 .Sh "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
7231 Internal \*(UA variables are controlled via the
7235 commands; prefixing a variable name with the string
7239 has the same effect as using
7245 Creation or editing of variables can be performed in the
7250 will give more insight on the given variable(s), and
7252 when called without arguments, will show a listing of all variables.
7253 Both commands support a more
7256 Some well-known variables will also become inherited from the
7259 implicitly, others can be explicitly imported with the command
7261 and henceforth share said properties.
7264 Two different kind of internal variables exist.
7265 There are boolean variables, which can only be in one of the two states
7269 and value variables with a(n optional) string value.
7270 For the latter proper quoting is necessary upon assignment time, the
7271 introduction of the section
7273 documents the supported quoting rules.
7275 .Bd -literal -offset indent
7276 wysh set one=val\e 1 two="val 2" \e
7277 three='val "3"' four=$'val \e'4\e''; \e
7278 varshow one two three four; \e
7279 unset one two three four
7283 Dependent upon the actual option the string values will be interpreted
7284 as numbers, colour names, normal text etc., but there also exists
7285 a special kind of string value, the
7286 .Dq boolean string ,
7287 which must either be a decimal integer (in which case
7291 and any other value is true) or any of the (case-insensitive) strings
7297 for a false boolean and
7303 for a true boolean; a special kind of boolean string is the
7305 which is a boolean string that can optionally be prefixed with the
7306 (case-insensitive) term
7310 which causes prompting of the user in interactive mode, with the given
7311 boolean as the default value.
7313 .\" .Ss "Initial settings" {{{
7314 .\" (Keep in SYNC: ./nail.h:okeys, ./nail.rc, ./nail.1:"Initial settings")
7315 .Ss "Initial settings"
7317 The standard POSIX 2008/Cor 2-2016 mandates the following initial
7323 .Pf no Va autoprint ,
7337 .Pf no Va ignoreeof ,
7339 .Pf no Va keepsave ,
7341 .Pf no Va outfolder ,
7349 .Pf no Va sendwait ,
7358 Notes: \*(UA does not support the
7360 variable \(en use command line options or
7362 to pass options through to a
7364 And the default global
7366 file, which is loaded unless the
7368 (with according argument) or
7370 command line options have been used, or the
7371 .Ev MAILX_NO_SYSTEM_RC
7372 environment variable is set (see
7373 .Sx "Resource files" )
7374 bends those initial settings a bit, e.g., it sets the variables
7379 to name a few, establishes a default
7381 selection etc., and should thus be taken into account.
7384 .\" .Ss "Variables" {{{
7387 .Bl -tag -width ".It Va BaNg"
7391 \*(RO The exit status of the last command, or the
7396 This status has a meaning in the state machine: in conjunction with
7398 any non-0 exit status will cause a program exit, and in
7400 mode any error while loading (any of the) resource files will have the
7404 .Sx "Command modifiers" ,
7405 can be used to instruct the state machine to ignore errors.
7409 \*(RO The current error number
7410 .Pf ( Xr errno 3 ) ,
7411 which is set after an error occurred; it is also available via
7413 and the error name and documentation string can be queried via
7417 \*(ID This machinery is new and the error number is only really usable
7418 if a command explicitly states that it manages the variable
7420 for others errno will be used in case of errors, or
7422 if that is 0: it thus may or may not reflect the real error.
7423 The error number may be set with the command
7429 \*(RO This is a multiplexer variable which performs dynamic expansion of
7430 the requested state or condition, of which there are:
7433 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Va BaNg"
7437 .It Va ^ERR , ^ERRDOC , ^ERRNAME
7438 The number, documentation, and name of the current
7440 respectively, which is usually set after an error occurred.
7441 \*(ID This machinery is new and is usually reliable only if a command
7442 explicitly states that it manages the variable
7444 which is effectively identical to
7446 Each of those variables can be suffixed with a hyphen minus followed by
7447 a name or number, in which case the expansion refers to the given error.
7448 Note this is a direct mapping of (a subset of) the system error values:
7449 .Bd -literal -offset indent
7451 eval echo \e$1: \e$^ERR-$1: \e$^ERRNAME-$1: \e$^ERRDOC-$1
7452 vput vexpr i + "$1" 1
7464 \*(RO Expands all positional parameters (see
7466 separated by a space character.
7467 \*(ID The special semantics of the equally named special parameter of the
7469 are not yet supported.
7473 \*(RO Expands all positional parameters (see
7475 separated by a space character.
7476 If placed in double quotation marks, each positional parameter is
7477 properly quoted to expand to a single parameter again.
7481 \*(RO Expands to the number of positional parameters in decimal.
7485 \*(RO Inside the scope of a
7489 ed macro this expands to the name of the calling macro, or to the empty
7490 string if the macro is running from top-level.
7491 For the \*(OPal regular expression search and replace operator of
7493 this expands to the entire matching expression.
7494 It represents the program name in global context.
7498 \*(RO Access of the positional parameter stack.
7499 All further parameters can be accessed with this syntax, too, e.g.,
7502 etc.; positional parameters can be shifted off the stack by calling
7504 The parameter stack contains, e.g., the arguments of a
7508 d macro, the matching groups of the \*(OPal regular expression search
7509 and replace expression of
7511 and can be explicitly created or overwritten with the command
7516 \*(RO Is set to the active
7520 .It Va add-file-recipients
7521 \*(BO When file or pipe recipients have been specified,
7522 mention them in the corresponding address fields of the message instead
7523 of silently stripping them from their recipient list.
7524 By default such addressees are not mentioned.
7528 \*(BO Causes only the local part to be evaluated
7529 when comparing addresses.
7533 \*(BO Causes messages saved in the
7535 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
7537 to be appended to the end rather than prepended.
7538 This should always be set.
7542 \*(BO Causes \*(UA to prompt for the subject of each message sent.
7543 If the user responds with simply a newline,
7544 no subject field will be sent.
7548 \*(BO Causes the prompts for
7552 lists to appear after the message has been edited.
7556 \*(BO If set, \*(UA asks for files to attach at the end of each message,
7557 shall the list be found empty at that time.
7558 An empty line finalizes the list.
7562 \*(BO Causes the user to be prompted for carbon copy recipients
7563 (at the end of each message if
7567 are set) shall the list be found empty (at that time).
7568 An empty line finalizes the list.
7572 \*(BO Causes the user to be prompted for blind carbon copy
7573 recipients (at the end of each message if
7577 are set) shall the list be found empty (at that time).
7578 An empty line finalizes the list.
7582 \*(BO\*(OP Causes the user to be prompted if the message is to be
7583 signed at the end of each message.
7586 variable is ignored when this variable is set.
7590 \*(BO Alternative name for
7595 A sequence of characters to display in the
7599 as shown in the display of
7601 each for one type of messages (see
7602 .Sx "Message states" ) ,
7603 with the default being
7606 .Ql NU\ \ *HMFAT+\-$~
7609 variable is set, in the following order:
7611 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql _"
7633 start of a collapsed thread.
7635 an uncollapsed thread (TODO ignored for now).
7639 classified as possible spam.
7645 Specifies a list of recipients to which a blind carbon copy of each
7646 outgoing message will be sent automatically.
7650 Specifies a list of recipients to which a carbon copy of each outgoing
7651 message will be sent automatically.
7655 \*(BO Causes threads to be collapsed automatically when threaded mode
7662 \*(BO Enable automatic
7664 ing of a(n existing)
7670 commands, e.g., the message that becomes the new
7672 is shown automatically, as via
7678 \*(BO\*(OB Causes threaded mode (see the
7680 command) to be entered automatically when a folder is opened.
7682 .Ql autosort=thread .
7686 Causes sorted mode (see the
7688 command) to be entered automatically with the value of this variable as
7689 sorting method when a folder is opened, e.g.,
7690 .Ql set autosort=thread .
7694 \*(BO Enables the substitution of all not (reverse-solidus) escaped
7697 characters by the contents of the last executed command for the
7699 shell escape command and
7701 one of the compose mode
7702 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
7703 If this variable is not set no reverse solidus stripping is performed.
7705 .It Va batch-exit-on-error
7706 \*(OB\*(BO Predecessor of
7711 \*(OP Terminals generate multi-byte sequences for certain forms of
7712 input, for example for function and other special keys.
7713 Some terminals however do not write these multi-byte sequences as
7714 a whole, but byte-by-byte, and the latter is what \*(UA actually reads.
7715 This variable specifies the timeout in milliseconds that the MLE (see
7716 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
7717 waits for more bytes to arrive unless it considers a sequence
7723 \*(BO Sets some cosmetical features to traditional BSD style;
7724 has the same affect as setting
7726 and all other variables prefixed with
7728 it also changes the behaviour of
7730 (which does not exist in BSD).
7734 \*(BO Changes the letters shown in the first column of a header
7735 summary to traditional BSD style.
7739 \*(BO Changes the display of columns in a header summary to traditional
7744 \*(BO Changes some informational messages to traditional BSD style.
7750 field to appear immediately after the
7752 field in message headers and with the
7754 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
7758 .It Va build-os , build-osenv
7759 \*(RO The operating system \*(UA has been build for, usually taken from
7765 respectively, the former being lowercased.
7769 The value that should appear in the
7773 MIME header fields when no character set conversion of the message data
7775 This defaults to US-ASCII, and the chosen character set should be
7776 US-ASCII compatible.
7780 \*(OP The default 8-bit character set that is used as an implicit last
7781 member of the variable
7783 This defaults to UTF-8 if character set conversion capabilities are
7784 available, and to ISO-8859-1 otherwise, in which case the only supported
7787 and this variable is effectively ignored.
7788 Refer to the section
7789 .Sx "Character sets"
7790 for the complete picture of character set conversion in \*(UA.
7793 .It Va charset-unknown-8bit
7794 \*(OP RFC 1428 specifies conditions when internet mail gateways shall
7796 the content of a mail message by using a character set with the name
7798 Because of the unclassified nature of this character set \*(UA will not
7799 be capable to convert this character set to any other character set.
7800 If this variable is set any message part which uses the character set
7802 is assumed to really be in the character set given in the value,
7803 otherwise the (final) value of
7805 is used for this purpose.
7807 This variable will also be taken into account if a MIME type (see
7808 .Sx "The mime.types files" )
7809 of a MIME message part that uses the
7811 character set is forcefully treated as text.
7815 The default value for the
7820 .It Va colour-disable
7821 \*(BO\*(OP Forcefully disable usage of colours.
7822 Also see the section
7823 .Sx "Coloured display" .
7827 \*(BO\*(OP Whether colour shall be used for output that is paged through
7829 Note that pagers may need special command line options, e.g.,
7837 in order to support colours.
7838 Often doing manual adjustments is unnecessary since \*(UA may perform
7839 adjustments dependent on the value of the environment variable
7841 (see there for more).
7845 .It Va contact-mail , contact-web
7846 \*(RO Addresses for contact per email and web, respectively, e.g., for
7847 bug reports, suggestions, or help regarding \*(UA.
7848 The former can be used directly:
7849 .Ql ? eval mail $contact-mail .
7853 In a(n interactive) terminal session, then if this valued variable is
7854 set it will be used as a threshold to determine how many lines the given
7855 output has to span before it will be displayed via the configured
7859 can be forced by setting this to the value
7861 setting it without a value will deduce the current height of the
7862 terminal screen to compute the treshold (see
7867 \*(ID At the moment this uses the count of lines of the message in wire
7868 format, which, dependent on the
7870 of the message, is unrelated to the number of display lines.
7871 (The software is old and historically the relation was a given thing.)
7875 Define a set of custom headers to be injected into newly composed or
7876 forwarded messages; it is also possible to create custom headers in
7879 which can be automated by setting one of the hooks
7880 .Va on-compose-splice
7882 .Va on-compose-splice-shell .
7883 The value is interpreted as a comma-separated list of custom headers to
7884 be injected, to include commas in the header bodies escape them with
7886 \*(ID Overwriting of automatically managed headers is neither supported
7889 .Dl set customhdr='Hdr1: Body1-1\e, Body1-2, Hdr2: Body2'
7893 Controls the appearance of the
7895 date and time format specification of the
7897 variable, that is used, for example, when viewing the summary of
7899 If unset, then the local receiving date is used and displayed
7900 unformatted, otherwise the message sending
7902 It is possible to assign a
7904 format string and control formatting, but embedding newlines via the
7906 format is not supported, and will result in display errors.
7908 .Ql %Y-%m-%d %H:%M ,
7910 .Va datefield-markout-older .
7913 .It Va datefield-markout-older
7914 Only used in conjunction with
7916 Can be used to create a visible distinction of messages dated more than
7917 a day in the future, or older than six months, a concept comparable to the
7919 option of the POSIX utility
7921 If set to the empty string, then the plain month, day and year of the
7923 will be displayed, but a
7925 format string to control formatting can be assigned.
7931 \*(BO Enables debug messages and obsoletion warnings, disables the
7932 actual delivery of messages and also implies
7938 .It Va disposition-notification-send
7940 .Ql Disposition-Notification-To:
7941 header (RFC 3798) with the message.
7945 .\" TODO .It Va disposition-notification-send-HOST
7947 .\".Va disposition-notification-send
7948 .\" for SMTP accounts on a specific host.
7949 .\" TODO .It Va disposition-notification-send-USER@HOST
7951 .\".Va disposition-notification-send
7952 .\"for a specific account.
7956 \*(BO When dot is set, a period
7958 on a line by itself during message input in (interactive or batch
7960 compose mode will be treated as end-of-message (in addition to the
7961 normal end-of-file condition).
7962 This behaviour is implied in
7968 .It Va dotlock-ignore-error
7969 \*(BO\*(OP Synchronization of mailboxes which \*(UA treats as
7971 .Sx "primary system mailbox" Ns
7972 es (see, e.g., the notes on
7973 .Sx "Filename transformations" ,
7974 as well as the documentation of
7976 will be protected with so-called dotlock files\(emthe traditional mail
7977 spool file locking method\(emin addition to system file locking.
7978 Because \*(UA ships with a privilege-separated dotlock creation program
7979 that should always be able to create such a dotlock file there is no
7980 good reason to ignore dotlock file creation errors, and thus these are
7981 fatal unless this variable is set.
7985 \*(BO If this variable is set then the editor is started automatically
7986 when a message is composed in interactive mode, as if the
7988 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
7992 variable is implied for this automatically spawned editor session.
7996 \*(BO When a message is edited while being composed,
7997 its header is included in the editable text.
8007 fields are accepted within the header, other fields are ignored.
8011 \*(BO When entering interactive mode \*(UA normally writes
8012 .Dq \&No mail for user
8013 and exits immediately if a mailbox is empty or does not exist.
8014 If this variable is set \*(UA starts even with an empty or non-existent
8015 mailbox (the latter behaviour furtherly depends upon
8021 \*(BO Let each command with a non-0 exit status, including every
8025 s a non-0 status, cause a program exit unless prefixed by
8028 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) ;
8029 please refer to the variable
8031 for more on this topic.
8035 The first character of this value defines the escape character for
8036 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
8038 The default value is the character tilde
8040 If set to the empty string, command escapes are disabled.
8044 If not set then file and command pipeline targets are not allowed,
8045 and any such address will be filtered out, giving a warning message.
8046 If set without a value then all possible recipient address
8047 specifications will be accepted \(en see the section
8048 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode"
8050 To accept them, but only in interactive mode, or when tilde commands
8051 were enabled explicitly by using one of the command line options
8055 set this to the (case-insensitive) value
8057 (it actually acts like
8058 .Ql restrict,-all,+name,+addr ,
8059 so that care for ordering issues must be taken) .
8061 In fact the value is interpreted as a comma-separated list of values.
8064 then the existence of disallowed specifications is treated as a hard
8065 send error instead of only filtering them out.
8066 The remaining values specify whether a specific type of recipient
8067 address specification is allowed (optionally indicated by a plus sign
8069 prefix) or disallowed (prefixed with a hyphen-minus
8073 addresses all possible address specifications,
8077 command pipeline targets,
8079 plain user names and (MTA) aliases (\*(OB
8081 may be used as an alternative syntax to
8086 These kind of values are interpreted in the given order, so that
8087 .Ql restrict,\:fail,\:+file,\:-all,\:+addr
8088 will cause hard errors for any non-network address recipient address
8089 unless \*(UA is in interactive mode or has been started with the
8093 command line option; in the latter case(s) any address may be used, then.
8095 Historically invalid network addressees are silently stripped off.
8096 To change this and ensure that any encountered invalid email address
8097 instead causes a hard error, ensure the string
8099 is an entry in the above list.
8100 Setting this automatically enables network addressees
8101 (it actually acts like
8102 .Ql failinvaddr,+addr ,
8103 so that care for ordering issues must be taken) .
8107 Unless this variable is set additional
8109 (Mail-Transfer-Agent)
8110 arguments from the command line, as can be given after a
8112 separator, are ignored due to safety reasons.
8113 However, if set to the special (case-insensitive) value
8115 then the presence of additional MTA arguments is treated as a hard
8116 error that causes \*(UA to exit with failure status.
8117 A lesser strict variant is the otherwise identical
8119 which does accept such arguments in interactive mode, or if tilde
8120 commands were enabled explicitly by using one of the command line options
8127 \*(RO String giving a list of features \*(UA, preceded with a plus sign
8129 if the feature is available, and a hyphen-minus
8132 The output of the command
8134 will include this information.
8138 \*(BO This setting reverses the meanings of a set of reply commands,
8139 turning the lowercase variants, which by default address all recipients
8140 included in the header of a message
8141 .Pf ( Ic reply , respond , followup )
8142 into the uppercase variants, which by default address the sender only
8143 .Pf ( Ic Reply , Respond , Followup )
8146 .Ic replysender , respondsender , followupsender
8148 .Ic replyall , respondall , followupall
8149 are not affected by the current setting of
8154 The default path under which mailboxes are to be saved:
8155 filenames that begin with the plus sign
8157 will have the plus sign replaced with the value of this variable if set,
8158 otherwise the plus sign will remain unchanged when doing
8159 .Sx "Filename transformations" ;
8162 for more on this topic.
8163 The value supports a subset of transformations itself, and if the
8164 non-empty value does not start with a solidus
8168 will be prefixed automatically.
8169 Once the actual value is evaluated first, the internal variable
8171 will be updated for caching purposes.
8175 This variable can be set to the name of a
8177 macro which will be called whenever a
8180 The macro will also be invoked when new mail arrives,
8181 but message lists for commands executed from the macro
8182 only include newly arrived messages then.
8184 are activated by default in a folder hook, causing the covered settings
8185 to be reverted once the folder is left again.
8188 Macro behaviour, including option localization, will change in v15.
8189 One should be aware of that and possibly embed version checks in the
8190 used resource file(s).
8193 .It Va folder-hook-FOLDER
8198 Unlike other folder specifications, the fully expanded name of a folder,
8199 without metacharacters, is used to avoid ambiguities.
8200 However, if the mailbox resides under
8204 specification is tried in addition, e.g., if
8208 (and thus relative to the user's home directory) then
8209 .Pa /home/usr1/mail/sent
8211 .Ql folder-hook-/home/usr1/mail/sent
8212 first, but then followed by
8213 .Ql folder-hook-+sent .
8216 .It Va folder-resolved
8217 \*(RO Set to the fully resolved path of
8219 once that evaluation has occurred; rather internal.
8223 \*(BO Controls whether a
8224 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
8225 header is generated when sending messages to known mailing lists.
8227 .Va followup-to-honour
8229 .Ic mlist , mlsubscribe , reply
8234 .It Va followup-to-honour
8236 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
8237 header is honoured when group-replying to a message via
8241 This is a quadoption; if set without a value it defaults to
8251 .It Va forward-as-attachment
8252 \*(BO Original messages are normally sent as inline text with the
8255 and only the first part of a multipart message is included.
8256 With this setting enabled messages are sent as unmodified MIME
8258 attachments with all of their parts included.
8261 .It Va forward-inject-head
8262 The string to put before the text of a message with the
8264 command instead of the default
8265 .Dq -------- Original Message -------- .
8266 No heading is put if it is set to the empty string.
8267 This variable is ignored if the
8268 .Va forward-as-attachment
8273 The address (or a list of addresses) to put into the
8275 field of the message header, quoting RFC 5322:
8276 the author(s) of the message, that is, the mailbox(es) of the person(s)
8277 or system(s) responsible for the writing of the message.
8280 ing to messages these addresses are handled as if they were in the
8284 If the machine's hostname is not valid at the Internet (for example at
8285 a dialup machine) then either this variable or
8287 (\*(IN and with a defined SMTP protocol in
8290 adds even more fine-tuning capabilities),
8294 contains more than one address,
8297 variable is required (according to the standard RFC 5322).
8299 If a file-based MTA is used, then
8301 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
8303 can nonetheless be enforced to appear as the envelope sender address at
8304 the MTA protocol level (the RFC 5321 reverse-path), either by using the
8306 command line option (with an empty argument; see there for the complete
8307 picture on this topic), or by setting the internal variable
8308 .Va r-option-implicit .
8312 \*(BO When replying to or forwarding a message \*(UA normally removes
8313 the comment and name parts of email addresses.
8314 If this variable is set such stripping is not performed,
8315 and comments, names etc. are retained.
8318 \*(OB Predecessor of
8319 .Va forward-inject-head .
8323 \*(BO Causes the header summary to be written at startup and after
8324 commands that affect the number of messages or the order of messages in
8329 mode a header summary will also be displayed on folder changes.
8330 The command line option
8338 A format string to use for the summary of
8340 similar to the ones used for
8343 Format specifiers in the given string start with a percent sign
8345 and may be followed by an optional decimal number indicating the field
8346 width \(em if that is negative, the field is to be left-aligned.
8347 Valid format specifiers are:
8350 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql _%%_"
8352 A plain percent sign.
8355 a space character but for the current message
8357 for which it expands to
8361 a space character but for the current message
8363 for which it expands to
8366 \*(OP The spam score of the message, as has been classified via the
8369 Shows only a replacement character if there is no spam support.
8371 Message attribute character (status flag); the actual content can be
8375 The date found in the
8377 header of the message when
8379 is set (the default), otherwise the date when the message was received.
8380 Formatting can be controlled by assigning a
8385 The indenting level in threaded mode.
8387 The address of the message sender.
8389 The message thread tree structure.
8390 (Note that this format does not support a field width.)
8392 The number of lines of the message, if available.
8396 The number of octets (bytes) in the message, if available.
8398 Message subject (if any).
8400 Message subject (if any) in double quotes.
8402 Message recipient flags: is the addressee of the message a known or
8403 subscribed mailing list \(en see
8408 The position in threaded/sorted order.
8412 .Ql %>\&%a\&%m\ %-18f\ %16d\ %4l/%\-5o\ %i%-s ,
8414 .Ql %>\&%a\&%m\ %20-f\ \ %16d\ %3l/%\-5o\ %i%-S
8425 .It Va headline-bidi
8426 Bidirectional text requires special treatment when displaying headers,
8427 because numbers (in dates or for file sizes etc.) will not affect the
8428 current text direction, in effect resulting in ugly line layouts when
8429 arabic or other right-to-left text is to be displayed.
8430 On the other hand only a minority of terminals is capable to correctly
8431 handle direction changes, so that user interaction is necessary for
8433 Note that extended host system support is required nonetheless, e.g.,
8434 detection of the terminal character set is one precondition;
8435 and this feature only works in an Unicode (i.e., UTF-8) locale.
8437 In general setting this variable will cause \*(UA to encapsulate text
8438 fields that may occur when displaying
8440 (and some other fields, like dynamic expansions in
8442 with special Unicode control sequences;
8443 it is possible to fine-tune the terminal support level by assigning
8445 no value (or any value other than
8450 will make \*(UA assume that the terminal is capable to properly deal
8451 with Unicode version 6.3, in which case text is embedded in a pair of
8452 U+2068 (FIRST STRONG ISOLATE) and U+2069 (POP DIRECTIONAL ISOLATE)
8454 In addition no space on the line is reserved for these characters.
8456 Weaker support is chosen by using the value
8458 (Unicode 6.3, but reserve the room of two spaces for writing the control
8459 sequences onto the line).
8464 select Unicode 1.1 support (U+200E, LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK); the latter
8465 again reserves room for two spaces in addition.
8469 \*(OP If a line editor is available then this can be set to
8470 name the (expandable) path of the location of a permanent history file.
8475 .It Va history-gabby
8476 \*(BO\*(OP Add more entries to the history as is normally done.
8479 .It Va history-gabby-persist
8480 \*(BO\*(OP \*(UA's own MLE will not save the additional
8482 entries in persistent storage unless this variable is set.
8483 On the other hand it will not loose the knowledge of whether
8484 a persistent entry was gabby or not.
8490 \*(OP Setting this variable imposes a limit on the number of concurrent
8492 If set to the value 0 then no further history entries will be added, and
8493 loading and incorporation of the
8495 upon program startup can also be suppressed by doing this.
8496 Runtime changes will not be reflected, but will affect the number of
8497 entries saved to permanent storage.
8501 \*(BO This setting controls whether messages are held in the system
8503 and it is set by default.
8507 Use this string as hostname when expanding local addresses instead of
8508 the value obtained from
8512 It is used, e.g., in
8516 fields, as well as when generating
8518 MIME part related unique ID fields.
8519 Setting it to the empty string will cause the normal hostname to be
8520 used, but nonetheless enables creation of said ID fields.
8521 \*(IN in conjunction with the built-in SMTP
8524 also influences the results:
8525 one should produce some test messages with the desired combination of
8534 \*(BO\*(OP Can be used to turn off the automatic conversion of domain
8535 names according to the rules of IDNA (internationalized domain names
8537 Since the IDNA code assumes that domain names are specified with the
8539 character set, an UTF-8 locale charset is required to represent all
8540 possible international domain names (before conversion, that is).
8544 The input field separator that is used (\*(ID by some functions) to
8545 determine where to split input data.
8547 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It MMM"
8549 Unsetting is treated as assigning the default value,
8552 If set to the empty value, no field splitting will be performed.
8554 If set to a non-empty value, all whitespace characters are extracted
8555 and assigned to the variable
8559 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It MMM"
8562 will be ignored at the beginning and end of input.
8563 Diverging from POSIX shells default whitespace is removed in addition,
8564 which is owed to the entirely different line content extraction rules.
8566 Each occurrence of a character of
8568 will cause field-splitting, any adjacent
8570 characters will be skipped.
8575 \*(RO Automatically deduced from the whitespace characters in
8580 \*(BO Ignore interrupt signals from the terminal while entering
8581 messages; instead echo them as
8583 characters and discard the current line.
8587 \*(BO Ignore end-of-file conditions
8588 .Pf ( Ql control-D )
8589 in compose mode on message input and in interactive command input.
8590 If set an interactive command input session can only be left by
8591 explicitly using one of the commands
8595 and message input in compose mode can only be terminated by entering
8598 on a line by itself or by using the
8600 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" ;
8601 Setting this implies the behaviour that
8609 If this is set to a non-empty string it will specify the users
8611 .Sx "primary system mailbox" ,
8614 and the system-dependent default, and (thus) be used to replace
8617 .Sx "Filename transformations" ;
8620 for more on this topic.
8621 The value supports a subset of transformations itself.
8629 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
8632 option for indenting messages,
8633 in place of the normal tabulator character
8635 which is the default.
8636 Be sure to quote the value if it contains spaces or tabs.
8640 \*(BO If set, an empty
8642 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
8643 file is not removed.
8644 Note that, in conjunction with
8646 any empty file will be removed unless this variable is set.
8647 This may improve the interoperability with other mail user agents
8648 when using a common folder directory, and prevents malicious users
8649 from creating fake mailboxes in a world-writable spool directory.
8650 \*(ID Only local regular (MBOX) files are covered, Maildir or other
8651 mailbox types will never be removed, even if empty.
8654 .It Va keep-content-length
8655 \*(BO When (editing messages and) writing MBOX mailbox files \*(UA can
8660 header fields that some MUAs generate by setting this variable.
8661 Since \*(UA does neither use nor update these non-standardized header
8662 fields (which in itself shows one of their conceptual problems),
8663 stripping them should increase interoperability in between MUAs that
8664 work with with same mailbox files.
8665 Note that, if this is not set but
8666 .Va writebackedited ,
8667 as below, is, a possibly performed automatic stripping of these header
8668 fields already marks the message as being modified.
8669 \*(ID At some future time \*(UA will be capable to rewrite and apply an
8671 to modified messages, and then those fields will be stripped silently.
8675 \*(BO When a message is saved it is usually discarded from the
8676 originating folder when \*(UA is quit.
8677 This setting causes all saved message to be retained.
8680 .It Va line-editor-disable
8681 \*(BO Turn off any enhanced line editing capabilities (see
8682 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor"
8686 .It Va line-editor-no-defaults
8687 \*(BO\*(OP Do not establish any default key binding.
8691 Error log message prefix string
8692 .Pf ( Ql "\*(uA: " ) .
8695 .It Va mailbox-display
8696 \*(RO The name of the current mailbox
8698 possibly abbreviated for display purposes.
8701 .It Va mailbox-resolved
8702 \*(RO The fully resolved path of the current mailbox.
8705 .It Va mailx-extra-rc
8706 An additional startup file that is loaded as the last of the
8707 .Sx "Resource files" .
8708 Use this file for commands that are not understood by other POSIX
8710 implementations, i.e., mostly anything which is not covered by
8711 .Sx "Initial settings" .
8715 \*(BO When a message is replied to and this variable is set,
8716 it is marked as having been
8719 .Sx "Message states" .
8723 \*(BO When opening MBOX mailbox databases \*(UA by default uses tolerant
8724 POSIX rules for detecting message boundaries (so-called
8726 lines) due to compatibility reasons, instead of the stricter rules that
8727 have been standardized in RFC 4155.
8728 This behaviour can be switched to the stricter RFC 4155 rules by
8729 setting this variable.
8730 (This is never necessary for any message newly generated by \*(UA,
8731 it only applies to messages generated by buggy or malicious MUAs, or may
8732 occur in old MBOX databases: \*(UA itself will choose a proper
8734 to avoid false interpretation of
8736 content lines in the MBOX database.)
8738 This may temporarily be handy when \*(UA complains about invalid
8740 lines when opening a MBOX: in this case setting this variable and
8741 re-opening the mailbox in question may correct the result.
8742 If so, copying the entire mailbox to some other file, as in
8743 .Ql copy * SOME-FILE ,
8744 will perform proper, all-compatible
8746 quoting for all detected messages, resulting in a valid MBOX mailbox.
8747 Finally the variable can be unset again:
8748 .Bd -literal -offset indent
8750 localopts yes; wysh set mbox-rfc4155;\e
8751 wysh File "${1}"; eval copy * "${2}"
8753 call mboxfix /tmp/bad.mbox /tmp/good.mbox
8758 \*(BO Internal development variable.
8761 .It Va message-id-disable
8762 \*(BO By setting this variable the generation of
8764 can be completely suppressed, effectively leaving this task up to the
8766 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) or the SMTP server.
8767 (According to RFC 5321 a SMTP server is not required to add this
8768 field by itself, so it should be ensured that it accepts messages without
8770 This variable also affects automatic generation of
8775 .It Va message-inject-head
8776 A string to put at the beginning of each new message.
8777 The escape sequences tabulator
8784 .It Va message-inject-tail
8785 A string to put at the end of each new message.
8786 The escape sequences tabulator
8794 \*(BO Usually, when an
8796 expansion contains the sender, the sender is removed from the expansion.
8797 Setting this option suppresses these removals.
8802 option to be passed through to the
8804 (Mail-Transfer-Agent); though most of the modern MTAs no longer document
8805 this flag, no MTA is known which does not support it (for historical
8809 .It Va mime-allow-text-controls
8810 \*(BO When sending messages, each part of the message is MIME-inspected
8811 in order to classify the
8814 .Ql Content-Transfer-Encoding:
8817 that is required to send this part over mail transport, i.e.,
8818 a computation rather similar to what the
8820 command produces when used with the
8824 This classification however treats text files which are encoded in
8825 UTF-16 (seen for HTML files) and similar character sets as binary
8826 octet-streams, forcefully changing any
8831 .Ql application/octet-stream :
8832 If that actually happens a yet unset charset MIME parameter is set to
8834 effectively making it impossible for the receiving MUA to automatically
8835 interpret the contents of the part.
8837 If this variable is set, and the data was unambiguously identified as
8838 text data at first glance (by a
8842 file extension), then the original
8844 will not be overwritten.
8847 .It Va mime-alternative-favour-rich
8848 \*(BO If this variable is set then rich MIME alternative parts (e.g.,
8849 HTML) will be preferred in favour of included plain text versions when
8850 displaying messages, provided that a handler exists which produces
8851 output that can be (re)integrated into \*(UA's normal visual display.
8852 (E.g., at the time of this writing some newsletters ship their full
8853 content only in the rich HTML part, whereas the plain text part only
8854 contains topic subjects.)
8857 .It Va mime-counter-evidence
8860 field is used to decide how to handle MIME parts.
8861 Some MUAs, however, do not use
8862 .Sx "The mime.types files"
8864 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" )
8865 or a similar mechanism to correctly classify content, but specify an
8866 unspecific MIME type
8867 .Pf ( Ql application/octet-stream )
8868 even for plain text attachments.
8869 If this variable is set then \*(UA will try to re-classify such MIME
8870 message parts, if possible, for example via a possibly existing
8871 attachment filename.
8872 A non-empty value may also be given, in which case a number is expected,
8873 actually a carrier of bits.
8874 Creating the bit-carrying number is a simple addition:
8875 .Bd -literal -offset indent
8876 ? !echo Value should be set to $((2 + 4 + 8))
8877 Value should be set to 14
8880 .Bl -bullet -compact
8882 If bit two is set (2) then the detected
8884 will be carried along with the message and be used for deciding which
8885 MIME handler is to be used, for example;
8886 when displaying such a MIME part the part-info will indicate the
8887 overridden content-type by showing a plus sign
8890 If bit three is set (4) then the counter-evidence is always produced
8891 and a positive result will be used as the MIME type, even forcefully
8892 overriding the parts given MIME type.
8894 If bit four is set (8) then as a last resort the actual content of
8895 .Ql application/octet-stream
8896 parts will be inspected, so that data which looks like plain text can be
8901 .It Va mime-encoding
8903 .Ql Content-Transfer-Encoding
8904 to use in outgoing text messages and message parts, where applicable.
8905 (7-bit clean text messages are sent as-is, without a transfer encoding.)
8908 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql _%%_"
8911 8-bit transport effectively causes the raw data be passed through
8912 unchanged, but may cause problems when transferring mail messages over
8913 channels that are not ESMTP (RFC 1869) compliant.
8914 Also, several input data constructs are not allowed by the
8915 specifications and may cause a different transfer-encoding to be used.
8916 .It Ql quoted-printable
8918 Quoted-printable encoding is 7-bit clean and has the property that ASCII
8919 characters are passed through unchanged, so that an english message can
8920 be read as-is; it is also acceptible for other single-byte locales that
8921 share many characters with ASCII, like, e.g., ISO-8859-1.
8922 The encoding will cause a large overhead for messages in other character
8923 sets: e.g., it will require up to twelve (12) bytes to encode a single
8924 UTF-8 character of four (4) bytes.
8926 .Pf (Or\0 Ql b64 . )
8927 The default encoding, it is 7-bit clean and will always be used for
8929 This encoding has a constant input:output ratio of 3:4, regardless of
8930 the character set of the input data it will encode three bytes of input
8931 to four bytes of output.
8932 This transfer-encoding is not human readable without performing
8937 .It Va mimetypes-load-control
8938 Can be used to control which of
8939 .Sx "The mime.types files"
8940 are loaded: if the letter
8942 is part of the option value, then the user's personal
8944 file will be loaded (if it exists); likewise the letter
8946 controls loading of the system wide
8947 .Pa /etc/mime.types ;
8948 directives found in the user file take precedence, letter matching is
8950 If this variable is not set \*(UA will try to load both files.
8951 Incorporation of the \*(UA-built-in MIME types cannot be suppressed,
8952 but they will be matched last (the order can be listed via
8955 More sources can be specified by using a different syntax: if the
8956 value string contains an equals sign
8958 then it is instead parsed as a comma-separated list of the described
8961 pairs; the given filenames will be expanded and loaded, and their
8962 content may use the extended syntax that is described in the section
8963 .Sx "The mime.types files" .
8964 Directives found in such files always take precedence (are prepended to
8965 the MIME type cache).
8970 To choose an alternate Mail-Transfer-Agent, set this option to either
8971 the full pathname of an executable (optionally prefixed with a
8973 protocol indicator), or \*(OPally a SMTP protocol URL, e.g., \*(IN
8975 .Dl smtps?://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
8978 .Ql [smtp://]server[:port] . )
8979 The default has been chosen at compie time.
8980 All supported data transfers are executed in child processes, which
8981 run asynchronously, and without supervision, unless either the
8986 If such a child receives a TERM signal, it will abort and
8993 For a file-based MTA it may be necessary to set
8995 in in order to choose the right target of a modern
8998 It will be passed command line arguments from several possible sources:
9001 if set, from the command line if given and the variable
9004 Argument processing of the MTA will be terminated with a
9009 The otherwise occurring implicit usage of the following MTA command
9010 line arguments can be disabled by setting the boolean variable
9011 .Va mta-no-default-arguments
9012 (which will also disable passing
9016 (for not treating a line with only a dot
9018 character as the end of input),
9026 variable is set); in conjunction with the
9028 command line option \*(UA will also (not) pass
9034 \*(OP \*(UA can send mail over SMTP network connections to a single
9035 defined SMTP smarthost, the access URL of which has to be assigned to
9037 To use this mode it is helpful to read
9038 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" .
9039 It may be necessary to set the
9041 variable in order to use a specific combination of
9046 with some mail providers.
9049 .Bl -bullet -compact
9051 The plain SMTP protocol (RFC 5321) that normally lives on the
9052 server port 25 and requires setting the
9053 .Va smtp-use-starttls
9054 variable to enter a SSL/TLS encrypted session state.
9055 Assign a value like \*(IN
9056 .Ql smtp://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
9058 .Ql smtp://server[:port] )
9059 to choose this protocol.
9061 The so-called SMTPS which is supposed to live on server port 465
9062 and is automatically SSL/TLS secured.
9063 Unfortunately it never became a standardized protocol and may thus not
9064 be supported by your hosts network service database
9065 \(en in fact the port number has already been reassigned to other
9068 SMTPS is nonetheless a commonly offered protocol and thus can be
9069 chosen by assigning a value like \*(IN
9070 .Ql smtps://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
9072 .Ql smtps://server[:port] ) ;
9073 due to the mentioned problems it is usually necessary to explicitly
9078 Finally there is the SUBMISSION protocol (RFC 6409), which usually
9079 lives on server port 587 and is practically identically to the SMTP
9080 protocol from \*(UA's point of view beside that; it requires setting the
9081 .Va smtp-use-starttls
9082 variable to enter a SSL/TLS secured session state.
9083 Assign a value like \*(IN
9084 .Ql submission://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
9086 .Ql submission://server[:port] ) .
9091 .It Va mta-arguments
9092 Arguments to pass through to a file-based
9094 can be given via this variable, which is parsed according to
9095 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
9096 into an array of arguments, and which will be joined onto MTA options
9097 from other sources, and then passed individually to the MTA:
9099 .Dl wysh set mta-arguments='-t -X \&"/tmp/my log\&"'
9102 .It Va mta-no-default-arguments
9103 \*(BO Unless this variable is set \*(UA will pass some well known
9104 standard command line options to a file-based
9106 (Mail-Transfer-Agent), see there for more.
9110 Many systems use a so-called
9112 environment to ensure compatibility with
9114 This works by inspecting the name that was used to invoke the mail
9116 If this variable is set then the mailwrapper (the program that is
9117 actually executed when calling the file-based
9119 will treat its contents as that name.
9124 .It Va netrc-lookup-USER@HOST , netrc-lookup-HOST , netrc-lookup
9125 \*(BO\*(IN\*(OP Used to control usage of the users
9127 file for lookup of account credentials, as documented in the section
9128 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup"
9132 .Sx "The .netrc file"
9133 documents the file format.
9145 then \*(UA will read the output of a shell pipe instead of the users
9147 file if this variable is set (to the desired shell command).
9148 This can be used to, e.g., store
9152 .Dl set netrc-pipe='gpg -qd ~/.netrc.pgp'
9156 If this variable has the value
9158 newly created local folders will be in Maildir instead of MBOX format.
9162 Checks for new mail in the current folder each time the prompt is shown.
9163 A Maildir folder must be re-scanned to determine if new mail has arrived.
9164 If this variable is set to the special value
9166 then a Maildir folder will not be rescanned completely, but only
9167 timestamp changes are detected.
9171 \*(BO Causes the filename given in the
9174 and the sender-based filenames for the
9178 commands to be interpreted relative to the directory given in the
9180 variable rather than to the current directory,
9181 unless it is set to an absolute pathname.
9184 .It Va on-compose-cleanup
9185 Macro hook which will be called after the message has been sent (or not,
9186 in case of failures), as the very last step before unrolling compose mode
9188 This hook is run even in case of fatal errors, and it is advisable to
9189 perform only absolutely necessary actions, like cleaning up
9192 For compose mode hooks that may affect the message content please see
9193 .Va on-compose-enter , on-compose-leave , on-compose-splice .
9194 \*(ID This hook exists only because
9195 .Ic alias , alternates , commandalias , shortcut ,
9196 to name a few, are currently not covered by
9198 or a similar mechanism: any changes applied in compose mode will
9199 continue to be in effect thereafter.
9203 .It Va on-compose-enter , on-compose-leave
9204 Macro hooks which will be called before compose mode is entered,
9205 and after composing has been finished (but before the
9207 is injected, etc.), respectively.
9209 are enabled for these hooks, causing any setting to be forgotten after
9210 the message has been sent;
9211 .Va on-compose-cleanup
9212 can be used to perform any other necessary cleanup.
9213 The following (read-only) variables will be set temporarily during
9214 execution of the macros to represent the according message headers, or
9215 the empty string for non-existent; they correspond to accoding virtual
9216 temporary message headers that can be accessed via
9219 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" :
9221 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Va mailx_subject"
9222 .It Va mailx-command
9223 The command that generates the message.
9224 .It Va mailx-subject
9230 .It Va mailx-to , mailx-cc , mailx-bcc
9231 The list of receiver addresses as a space-separated list.
9232 .It Va mailx-raw-to , mailx-raw-cc , mailx-raw-bcc
9233 The list of receiver addresses before any mangling (due to, e.g.,
9236 .Va recipients-in-cc )
9237 as a space-separated list.
9238 .It Va mailx-orig-from
9239 When replying, forwarding or resending, this will be set to the
9241 of the given message.
9242 .It Va mailx-orig-to , mailx-orig-cc , mailx-orig-bcc
9243 When replying, forwarding or resending, this will be set to the
9244 receivers of the given message.
9250 .It Va on-compose-splice , on-compose-splice-shell
9251 These hooks run once the normal compose mode is finished, but before the
9252 .Va on-compose-leave
9253 macro hook is called, the
9256 Both hooks will be executed in a subprocess, with their input and output
9257 connected to \*(UA such that they can act as if they would be an
9259 The difference in between them is that the latter is a
9261 command, whereas the former is a normal \*(UA macro, but which is
9262 restricted to a small set of commands (the
9266 will indicate said capability).
9268 are enabled for these hooks (in the parent process), causing any setting
9269 to be forgotten after the message has been sent;
9270 .Va on-compose-cleanup
9271 can be used to perform other cleanup as necessary.
9274 During execution of these hooks \*(UA will temporarily forget whether it
9275 has been started in interactive mode, (a restricted set of)
9276 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
9277 will always be available, and for guaranteed reproducibilities sake
9281 will be set to their defaults.
9282 The compose mode command
9284 has been especially designed for scriptability (via these hooks).
9285 The first line the hook will read on its standard input is the protocol
9286 version of said command escape, currently
9288 backward incompatible protocol changes have to be expected.
9291 Care must be taken to avoid deadlocks and other false control flow:
9292 if both involved processes wait for more input to happen at the
9293 same time, or one doesn't expect more input but the other is stuck
9294 waiting for consumption of its output, etc.
9295 There is no automatic synchronization of the hook: it will not be
9296 stopped automatically just because it, e.g., emits
9298 The hooks will however receive a termination signal if the parent enters
9300 \*(ID Protection against and interaction with signals is not yet given;
9301 it is likely that in the future these scripts will be placed in an
9302 isolated session, which is signalled in its entirety as necessary.
9304 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9305 wysh set on-compose-splice-shell=$'\e
9307 printf "hello $version! Headers: ";\e
9308 echo \e'~^header list\e';\e
9309 read status result;\e
9310 echo "status=$status result=$result";\e
9313 set on-compose-splice=ocsm
9316 echo Splice protocol version is $ver
9317 echo '~^h l'; read hl; vput vexpr es substring "${hl}" 0 1
9319 echoerr 'Cannot read header list'; echo '~x'; xit
9321 if [ "$hl" @i!@ ' cc' ]
9322 echo '~^h i cc Diet is your <mirr.or>'; read es;\e
9323 vput vexpr es substring "${es}" 0 1
9325 echoerr 'Cannot insert Cc: header'; echo '~x'
9333 .It Va on-resend-cleanup
9335 .Va on-compose-cleanup ,
9336 but is only triggered by
9340 .It Va on-resend-enter
9342 .Va on-compose-enter ,
9343 but is only triggered by
9348 \*(BO If set, each message feed through the command given for
9350 is followed by a formfeed character
9354 .It Va password-USER@HOST , password-HOST , password
9355 \*(IN Variable chain that sets a password, which is used in case none has
9356 been given in the protocol and account-specific URL;
9357 as a last resort \*(UA will ask for a password on the user's terminal if
9358 the authentication method requires a password.
9359 Specifying passwords in a startup file is generally a security risk;
9360 the file should be readable by the invoking user only.
9362 .It Va password-USER@HOST
9363 \*(OU (see the chain above for \*(IN)
9364 Set the password for
9368 If no such variable is defined for a host,
9369 the user will be asked for a password on standard input.
9370 Specifying passwords in a startup file is generally a security risk;
9371 the file should be readable by the invoking user only.
9375 \*(BO Send messages to the
9377 command without performing MIME and character set conversions.
9381 .It Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE
9382 When a MIME message part of type
9384 (case-insensitive) is displayed or quoted,
9385 its text is filtered through the value of this variable interpreted as
9387 Note that only parts which can be displayed inline as plain text (see
9389 are displayed unless otherwise noted, other MIME parts will only be
9390 considered by and for the command
9392 The special value commercial at
9394 forces interpretation of the message part as plain text, e.g.,
9395 .Ql set pipe-application/xml=@
9396 will henceforth display XML
9398 (The same could also be achieved by adding a MIME type marker with the
9401 And \*(OPally MIME type handlers may be defined via
9402 .Sx "The Mailcap files"
9403 \(em these directives,
9405 has already been used, should be referred to for further documentation.
9410 can in fact be used as a trigger character to adjust usage and behaviour
9411 of a following shell command specification more thoroughly by appending
9412 more special characters which refer to further mailcap directives, e.g.,
9413 the following hypothetical command specification could be used:
9415 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9416 set pipe-X/Y='@!++=@vim ${MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}'
9420 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql __"
9422 The command produces plain text to be integrated in \*(UAs output:
9426 If set the handler will not be invoked when a message is to be quoted,
9427 but only when it will be displayed:
9428 .Cd x-mailx-noquote .
9431 Run the command asynchronously, i.e., without blocking \*(UA:
9435 The command must be run on an interactive terminal, \*(UA will
9436 temporarily release the terminal to it:
9440 Request creation of a zero-sized temporary file, the absolute pathname
9441 of which will be made accessible via the environment variable
9442 .Ev MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY :
9443 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile .
9444 If given twice then the file will be unlinked automatically by \*(UA
9445 when the command loop is entered again at latest:
9446 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink .
9449 Normally the MIME part content is passed to the handler via standard
9450 input; if this flag is set then the data will instead be written into
9451 .Ev MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY
9452 .Pf ( Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill ) ,
9453 the creation of which is implied; note however that in order to cause
9454 deletion of the temporary file you still have to use two plus signs
9459 To avoid ambiguities with normal shell command content you can use
9460 another commercial at to forcefully terminate interpretation of
9461 remaining characters.
9462 (Any character not in this list will have the same effect.)
9466 Some information about the MIME part to be displayed is embedded into
9467 the environment of the shell command:
9470 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ev _AIL__ILENAME__ENERATED"
9472 .It Ev MAILX_CONTENT
9473 The MIME content-type of the part, if known, the empty string otherwise.
9476 .It Ev MAILX_CONTENT_EVIDENCE
9478 .Va mime-counter-evidence
9479 includes the carry-around-bit (2), then this will be set to the detected
9480 MIME content-type; not only then identical to
9481 .Ev \&\&MAILX_CONTENT
9485 .It Ev MAILX_FILENAME
9486 The filename, if any is set, the empty string otherwise.
9489 .It Ev MAILX_FILENAME_GENERATED
9493 .It Ev MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY
9494 If temporary file creation has been requested through the command prefix
9495 this variable will be set and contain the absolute pathname of the
9501 .It Va pipe-EXTENSION
9502 This is identical to
9503 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE
9506 (normalized to lowercase using character mappings of the ASCII charset)
9507 names a file extension, e.g.,
9509 Handlers registered using this method take precedence.
9512 .It Va pop3-auth-USER@HOST , pop3-auth-HOST , pop3-auth
9513 \*(OP\*(IN Variable chain that sets the POP3 authentication method.
9514 The only possible value as of now is
9516 which is thus the default.
9519 .Mx Va pop3-bulk-load
9520 .It Va pop3-bulk-load-USER@HOST , pop3-bulk-load-HOST , pop3-bulk-load
9521 \*(BO\*(OP When accessing a POP3 server \*(UA loads the headers of
9522 the messages, and only requests the message bodies on user request.
9523 For the POP3 protocol this means that the message headers will be
9525 If this variable is set then \*(UA will download only complete messages
9526 from the given POP3 server(s) instead.
9528 .Mx Va pop3-keepalive
9529 .It Va pop3-keepalive-USER@HOST , pop3-keepalive-HOST , pop3-keepalive
9530 \*(OP POP3 servers close the connection after a period of inactivity;
9531 the standard requires this to be at least 10 minutes,
9532 but practical experience may vary.
9533 Setting this variable to a numeric value greater than
9537 command to be sent each value seconds if no other operation is performed.
9540 .It Va pop3-no-apop-USER@HOST , pop3-no-apop-HOST , pop3-no-apop
9541 \*(BO\*(OP Unless this variable is set the
9543 authentication method will be used when connecting to a POP3 server that
9547 is that the password is not sent in clear text over the wire and that
9548 only a single packet is sent for the user/password tuple.
9550 .Va pop3-no-apop-HOST
9553 .Mx Va pop3-use-starttls
9554 .It Va pop3-use-starttls-USER@HOST , pop3-use-starttls-HOST , pop3-use-starttls
9555 \*(BO\*(OP Causes \*(UA to issue a
9557 command to make an unencrypted POP3 session SSL/TLS encrypted.
9558 This functionality is not supported by all servers,
9559 and is not used if the session is already encrypted by the POP3S method.
9561 .Va pop3-use-starttls-HOST
9567 \*(BO This flag enables POSIX mode, which changes behaviour of \*(UA
9568 where that deviates from standardized behaviour.
9569 It will be set implicitly before the
9570 .Sx "Resource files"
9571 are loaded if the environment variable
9573 is set, and adjusting any of those two will be reflected by the other
9575 The following behaviour is covered and enforced by this mechanism:
9578 .Bl -bullet -compact
9580 In non-interactive mode, any error encountered while loading resource
9581 files during program startup will cause a program exit, whereas in
9582 interactive mode such errors will stop loading of the currently loaded
9583 (stack of) file(s, i.e., recursively).
9584 These exits can be circumvented on a per-command base by using
9587 .Sx "Command modifiers" ,
9588 for each command which shall be allowed to fail.
9592 will replace the list of alternate addresses instead of appending to it.
9595 Upon changing the active
9599 will be displayed even if
9606 implies the behaviour described by
9612 is extended to cover any empty mailbox, not only empty
9614 .Sx "primary system mailbox" Ns
9615 es: they will be removed when they are left in empty state otherwise.
9620 .It Va print-alternatives
9621 \*(BO When a MIME message part of type
9622 .Ql multipart/alternative
9623 is displayed and it contains a subpart of type
9625 other parts are normally discarded.
9626 Setting this variable causes all subparts to be displayed,
9627 just as if the surrounding part was of type
9628 .Ql multipart/mixed .
9632 The string used as a prompt in interactive mode.
9633 Whenever the variable is evaluated the value is expanded as via
9634 dollar-single-quote expansion (see
9635 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting" ) .
9636 This (post-assignment, i.e., second) expansion can be used to embed
9637 status information, for example
9642 .Va mailbox-display .
9644 In order to embed characters which should not be counted when
9645 calculating the visual width of the resulting string, enclose the
9646 characters of interest in a pair of reverse solidus escaped brackets:
9648 a slot for coloured prompts is also available with the \*(OPal command
9650 Prompting may be prevented by setting this to the null string
9652 .Ql set noprompt ) .
9656 This string is used for secondary prompts, but is otherwise identical to
9663 \*(BO Suppresses the printing of the version when first invoked.
9667 If set, \*(UA starts a replying message with the original message
9668 prefixed by the value of the variable
9670 Normally, a heading consisting of
9671 .Dq Fromheaderfield wrote:
9672 is put before the quotation.
9677 variable, this heading is omitted.
9680 is assigned, only the headers selected by the
9683 selection are put above the message body,
9686 acts like an automatic
9688 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
9692 is assigned, all headers are put above the message body and all MIME
9693 parts are included, making
9695 act like an automatic
9698 .Va quote-as-attachment .
9701 .It Va quote-as-attachment
9702 \*(BO Add the original message in its entirety as a
9704 MIME attachment when replying to a message.
9705 Note this works regardless of the setting of
9710 \*(OP Can be set in addition to
9712 Setting this turns on a more fancy quotation algorithm in that leading
9713 quotation characters are compressed and overlong lines are folded.
9715 can be set to either one or two (space separated) numeric values,
9716 which are interpreted as the maximum (goal) and the minimum line length,
9717 respectively, in a spirit rather equal to the
9719 program, but line-, not paragraph-based.
9720 If not set explicitly the minimum will reflect the goal algorithmically.
9721 The goal cannot be smaller than the length of
9723 plus some additional pad.
9724 Necessary adjustments take place silently.
9727 .It Va r-option-implicit
9728 \*(BO Setting this option evaluates the contents of
9730 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
9732 and passes the results onto the used (file-based) MTA as described for the
9734 option (empty argument case).
9737 .It Va recipients-in-cc
9744 are by default merged into the new
9746 If this variable is set, only the original
9750 the rest is merged into
9755 Unless this variable is defined, no copies of outgoing mail will be saved.
9756 If defined it gives the pathname, subject to the usual
9757 .Sx "Filename transformations" ,
9758 of a folder where all new, replied-to or forwarded messages are saved:
9759 when saving to this folder fails the message is not sent, but instead
9763 The standard defines that relative (fully expanded) paths are to be
9764 interpreted relative to the current directory
9766 to force interpretation relative to
9769 needs to be set in addition.
9773 \*(BO If this variable is set the meaning of
9775 will be extended to cover messages which target only file and pipe
9778 These address types will not appear in recipient lists unless
9779 .Va add-file-recipients
9783 .It Va record-resent
9784 \*(BO If this variable is set the meaning of
9786 will be extended to also cover the
9793 .It Va reply-in-same-charset
9794 \*(BO If this variable is set \*(UA first tries to use the same
9795 character set of the original message for replies.
9796 If this fails, the mechanism described in
9797 .Sx "Character sets"
9798 is evaluated as usual.
9801 .It Va reply-strings
9802 Can be set to a comma-separated list of (case-insensitive according to
9803 ASCII rules) strings which shall be recognized in addition to the
9806 reply message indicators \(en built-in are
9808 which is mandated by RFC 5322, as well as the german
9813 which often has been seen in the wild;
9814 I.e., the separating colon has to be specified explicitly.
9818 A list of addresses to put into the
9820 field of the message header.
9821 Members of this list are handled as if they were in the
9826 .It Va reply-to-honour
9829 header is honoured when replying to a message via
9833 This is a quadoption; if set without a value it defaults to
9837 .It Va rfc822-body-from_
9838 \*(BO This variable can be used to force displaying a so-called
9840 line for messages that are embedded into an envelope mail via the
9842 MIME mechanism, for more visual convenience.
9846 \*(BO Enable saving of (partial) messages in
9848 upon interrupt or delivery error.
9852 The number of lines that represents a
9861 line display and scrolling via
9863 If this variable is not set \*(UA falls back to a calculation based upon
9864 the detected terminal window size and the baud rate: the faster the
9865 terminal, the more will be shown.
9866 Overall screen dimensions and pager usage is influenced by the
9867 environment variables
9875 .It Va searchheaders
9876 \*(BO Expand message-list specifiers in the form
9878 to all messages containing the substring
9882 The string search is case insensitive.
9886 \*(OP A comma-separated list of character set names that can be used in
9887 outgoing internet mail.
9888 The value of the variable
9890 is automatically appended to this list of character sets.
9891 If no character set conversion capabilities are compiled into \*(UA then
9892 the only supported charset is
9895 .Va sendcharsets-else-ttycharset
9896 and refer to the section
9897 .Sx "Character sets"
9898 for the complete picture of character set conversion in \*(UA.
9901 .It Va sendcharsets-else-ttycharset
9902 \*(BO\*(OP If this variable is set, but
9904 is not, then \*(UA acts as if
9906 had been set to the value of the variable
9908 In effect this combination passes through the message data in the
9909 character set of the current locale encoding:
9910 therefore mail message text will be (assumed to be) in ISO-8859-1
9911 encoding when send from within a ISO-8859-1 locale, and in UTF-8
9912 encoding when send from within an UTF-8 locale.
9916 never comes into play as
9918 is implicitly assumed to be 8-bit and capable to represent all files the
9919 user may specify (as is the case when no character set conversion
9920 support is available in \*(UA and the only supported character set is
9922 .Sx "Character sets" ) .
9923 This might be a problem for scripts which use the suggested
9925 setting, since in this case the character set is US-ASCII by definition,
9926 so that it is better to also override
9932 An address that is put into the
9934 field of outgoing messages, quoting RFC 5322: the mailbox of the agent
9935 responsible for the actual transmission of the message.
9936 This field should normally not be used unless the
9938 field contains more than one address, on which case it is required.
9941 address is handled as if it were in the
9945 .Va r-option-implicit .
9948 \*(OB Predecessor of
9951 .It Va sendmail-arguments
9952 \*(OB Predecessor of
9955 .It Va sendmail-no-default-arguments
9956 \*(OB\*(BO Predecessor of
9957 .Va mta-no-default-arguments .
9959 .It Va sendmail-progname
9960 \*(OB Predecessor of
9965 \*(BO When sending a message wait until the
9967 (including the built-in SMTP one) exits before accepting further commands.
9969 with this variable set errors reported by the MTA will be recognizable!
9970 If the MTA returns a non-zero exit status,
9971 the exit status of \*(UA will also be non-zero.
9975 \*(BO This setting causes \*(UA to start at the last message
9976 instead of the first one when opening a mail folder.
9980 \*(BO Causes \*(UA to use the sender's real name instead of the plain
9981 address in the header field summary and in message specifications.
9985 \*(BO Causes the recipient of the message to be shown in the header
9986 summary if the message was sent by the user.
9990 The string to expand
9993 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" ) .
9997 The string to expand
10000 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" ) .
10004 Must correspond to the name of a readable file if set.
10005 The file's content is then appended to each singlepart message
10006 and to the first part of each multipart message.
10007 Be warned that there is no possibility to edit the signature for an
10008 individual message.
10011 .It Va skipemptybody
10012 \*(BO If an outgoing message does not contain any text in its first or
10013 only message part, do not send it but discard it silently (see also the
10014 command line option
10019 .It Va smime-ca-dir , smime-ca-file
10020 \*(OP Specify the location of trusted CA certificates in PEM (Privacy
10021 Enhanced Mail) format as a directory and a file, respectively, for the
10022 purpose of verification of S/MIME signed messages.
10023 It is possible to set both, the file will be loaded immediately, the
10024 directory will be searched whenever no match has yet been found.
10025 The set of CA certificates which are built into the SSL/TLS library can
10026 be explicitly turned off by setting
10027 .Va smime-ca-no-defaults ,
10028 and further fine-tuning is possible via
10029 .Va smime-ca-flags .
10032 .It Va smime-ca-flags
10033 \*(OP Can be used to fine-tune behaviour of the X509 CA certificate
10034 storage, and the certificate verification that is used.
10035 The actual values and their meanings are documented for
10039 .It Va smime-ca-no-defaults
10040 \*(BO\*(OP Do not load the default CA locations that are built into the
10041 used to SSL/TLS library to verify S/MIME signed messages.
10043 .Mx Va smime-cipher
10044 .It Va smime-cipher-USER@HOST , smime-cipher
10045 \*(OP Specifies the cipher to use when generating S/MIME encrypted
10046 messages (for the specified account).
10047 RFC 5751 mandates a default of
10050 Possible values are (case-insensitive and) in decreasing cipher strength:
10058 (DES EDE3 CBC, 168 bits; default if
10060 is not available) and
10062 (DES CBC, 56 bits).
10064 The actually available cipher algorithms depend on the cryptographic
10065 library that \*(UA uses.
10066 \*(OP Support for more cipher algorithms may be available through
10067 dynamic loading via, e.g.,
10068 .Xr EVP_get_cipherbyname 3
10069 (OpenSSL) if \*(UA has been compiled to support this.
10072 .It Va smime-crl-dir
10073 \*(OP Specifies a directory that contains files with CRLs in PEM format
10074 to use when verifying S/MIME messages.
10077 .It Va smime-crl-file
10078 \*(OP Specifies a file that contains a CRL in PEM format to use when
10079 verifying S/MIME messages.
10082 .It Va smime-encrypt-USER@HOST
10083 \*(OP If this variable is set, messages send to the given receiver are
10084 encrypted before sending.
10085 The value of the variable must be set to the name of a file that
10086 contains a certificate in PEM format.
10088 If a message is sent to multiple recipients,
10089 each of them for whom a corresponding variable is set will receive an
10090 individually encrypted message;
10091 other recipients will continue to receive the message in plain text
10093 .Va smime-force-encryption
10095 It is recommended to sign encrypted messages, i.e., to also set the
10100 .It Va smime-force-encryption
10101 \*(BO\*(OP Causes \*(UA to refuse sending unencrypted messages.
10105 \*(BO\*(OP S/MIME sign outgoing messages with the user's private key
10106 and include the user's certificate as a MIME attachment.
10107 Signing a message enables a recipient to verify that the sender used
10108 a valid certificate,
10109 that the email addresses in the certificate match those in the message
10110 header and that the message content has not been altered.
10111 It does not change the message text,
10112 and people will be able to read the message as usual.
10114 .Va smime-sign-cert , smime-sign-include-certs
10116 .Va smime-sign-message-digest .
10118 .Mx Va smime-sign-cert
10119 .It Va smime-sign-cert-USER@HOST , smime-sign-cert
10120 \*(OP Points to a file in PEM format.
10121 For the purpose of signing and decryption this file needs to contain the
10122 user's private key, followed by his certificate.
10124 For message signing
10126 is always derived from the value of
10128 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
10130 For the purpose of encryption the recipient's public encryption key
10131 (certificate) is expected; the command
10133 can be used to save certificates of signed messages (the section
10134 .Sx "Signed and encrypted messages with S/MIME"
10135 gives some details).
10136 This mode of operation is usually driven by the specialized form.
10138 When decrypting messages the account is derived from the recipient
10143 of the message, which are searched for addresses for which such
10145 \*(UA always uses the first address that matches,
10146 so if the same message is sent to more than one of the user's addresses
10147 using different encryption keys, decryption might fail.
10149 For signing and decryption purposes it is possible to use encrypted
10150 keys, and the pseudo-host(s)
10151 .Ql USER@HOST.smime-cert-key
10152 for the private key
10154 .Ql USER@HOST.smime-cert-cert
10155 for the certificate stored in the same file)
10156 will be used for performing any necessary password lookup,
10157 therefore the lookup can be automatized via the mechanisms described in
10158 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" .
10159 For example, the hypothetical address
10161 could be driven with a private key / certificate pair path defined in
10162 .Va \&\&smime-sign-cert-bob@exam.ple ,
10163 and needed passwords would then be looked up via the pseudo hosts
10164 .Ql bob@exam.ple.smime-cert-key
10166 .Ql bob@exam.ple.smime-cert-cert ) .
10167 To include intermediate certificates, use
10168 .Va smime-sign-include-certs .
10170 .Mx Va smime-sign-include-certs
10171 .It Va smime-sign-include-certs-USER@HOST , smime-sign-include-certs
10172 \*(OP If used, this is supposed to a consist of a comma-separated list
10173 of files, each of which containing a single certificate in PEM format to
10174 be included in the S/MIME message in addition to the
10175 .Va smime-sign-cert
10177 This can be used to include intermediate certificates of the certificate
10178 authority, in order to allow the receiver's S/MIME implementation to
10179 perform a verification of the entire certificate chain, starting from
10180 a local root certificate, over the intermediate certificates, down to the
10181 .Va smime-sign-cert .
10182 Even though top level certificates may also be included in the chain,
10183 they won't be used for the verification on the receiver's side.
10185 For the purpose of the mechanisms involved here,
10187 refers to the content of the internal variable
10189 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
10192 .Ql USER@HOST.smime-include-certs
10193 will be used for performing password lookups for these certificates,
10194 shall they have been given one, therefore the lookup can be automatized
10195 via the mechanisms described in
10196 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" .
10198 .Mx Va smime-sign-message-digest
10199 .It Va smime-sign-message-digest-USER@HOST , smime-sign-message-digest
10200 \*(OP Specifies the message digest to use when signing S/MIME messages.
10201 RFC 5751 mandates a default of
10203 Possible values are (case-insensitive and) in decreasing cipher strength:
10211 The actually available message digest algorithms depend on the
10212 cryptographic library that \*(UA uses.
10213 \*(OP Support for more message digest algorithms may be available
10214 through dynamic loading via, e.g.,
10215 .Xr EVP_get_digestbyname 3
10216 (OpenSSL) if \*(UA has been compiled to support this.
10217 Remember that for this
10219 refers to the variable
10221 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
10225 \*(OB\*(OP To use the built-in SMTP transport, specify a SMTP URL in
10227 \*(ID For compatibility reasons a set
10229 is used in preference of
10233 .It Va smtp-auth-USER@HOST , smtp-auth-HOST , smtp-auth
10234 \*(OP Variable chain that controls the SMTP
10236 authentication method, possible values are
10242 as well as the \*(OPal methods
10248 method does not need any user credentials,
10250 requires a user name and all other methods require a user name and
10258 .Va smtp-auth-password
10260 .Va smtp-auth-user ) .
10265 .Va smtp-auth-USER@HOST :
10266 may override dependent on sender address in the variable
10269 .It Va smtp-auth-password
10270 \*(OP\*(OU Sets the global fallback password for SMTP authentication.
10271 If the authentication method requires a password, but neither
10272 .Va smtp-auth-password
10274 .Va smtp-auth-password-USER@HOST
10276 \*(UA will ask for a password on the user's terminal.
10278 .It Va smtp-auth-password-USER@HOST
10280 .Va smtp-auth-password
10281 for specific values of sender addresses, dependent upon the variable
10284 .It Va smtp-auth-user
10285 \*(OP\*(OU Sets the global fallback user name for SMTP authentication.
10286 If the authentication method requires a user name, but neither
10289 .Va smtp-auth-user-USER@HOST
10291 \*(UA will ask for a user name on the user's terminal.
10293 .It Va smtp-auth-user-USER@HOST
10296 for specific values of sender addresses, dependent upon the variable
10300 .It Va smtp-hostname
10301 \*(OP\*(IN Normally \*(UA uses the variable
10303 to derive the necessary
10305 information in order to issue a
10312 can be used to use the
10314 from the SMTP account
10321 from the content of this variable (or, if that is the empty string,
10323 or the local hostname as a last resort).
10324 This often allows using an address that is itself valid but hosted by
10325 a provider other than which (in
10327 is about to send the message.
10328 Setting this variable also influences generated
10334 .Mx Va smtp-use-starttls
10335 .It Va smtp-use-starttls-USER@HOST , smtp-use-starttls-HOST , smtp-use-starttls
10336 \*(BO\*(OP Causes \*(UA to issue a
10338 command to make an SMTP
10340 session SSL/TLS encrypted, i.e., to enable transport layer security.
10344 .It Va spam-interface
10345 \*(OP In order to use any of the spam-related commands (like, e.g.,
10347 the desired spam interface must be defined by setting this variable.
10348 Please refer to the manual section
10349 .Sx "Handling spam"
10350 for the complete picture of spam handling in \*(UA.
10351 All or none of the following interfaces may be available:
10353 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ql _ilte_"
10359 .Pf ( Lk http://spamassassin.apache.org SpamAssassin )
10361 Different to the generic filter interface \*(UA will automatically add
10362 the correct arguments for a given command and has the necessary
10363 knowledge to parse the program's output.
10364 A default value for
10366 will have been compiled into the \*(UA binary if
10370 during compilation.
10371 Shall it be necessary to define a specific connection type (rather than
10372 using a configuration file for that), the variable
10373 .Va spamc-arguments
10374 can be used as in, e.g.,
10375 .Ql -d server.example.com -p 783 .
10376 It is also possible to specify a per-user configuration via
10378 Note that this interface does not inspect the
10380 flag of a message for the command
10384 generic spam filter support via freely configurable hooks.
10385 This interface is meant for programs like
10387 and requires according behaviour in respect to the hooks' exit
10388 status for at least the command
10391 meaning a message is spam,
10395 for unsure and any other return value indicating a hard error);
10396 since the hooks can include shell code snippets diverting behaviour
10397 can be intercepted as necessary.
10399 .Va spamfilter-ham , spamfilter-noham , spamfilter-nospam , \
10402 .Va spamfilter-spam ;
10404 .Sx "Handling spam"
10405 contains examples for some programs.
10406 The process environment of the hooks will have the variable
10407 .Ev MAILX_FILENAME_GENERATED
10409 Note that spam score support for
10411 is not supported unless the \*(OPtional regular expression support is
10413 .Va spamfilter-rate-scanscore
10419 .It Va spam-maxsize
10420 \*(OP Messages that exceed this size will not be passed through to the
10422 .Va spam-interface .
10423 If unset or 0, the default of 420000 bytes is used.
10426 .It Va spamc-command
10427 \*(OP The path to the
10431 .Va spam-interface .
10432 Note that the path is not expanded, but used
10434 A fallback path will have been compiled into the \*(UA binary if the
10435 executable had been found during compilation.
10438 .It Va spamc-arguments
10439 \*(OP Even though \*(UA deals with most arguments for the
10442 automatically, it may at least sometimes be desirable to specify
10443 connection-related ones via this variable, e.g.,
10444 .Ql -d server.example.com -p 783 .
10448 \*(OP Specify a username for per-user configuration files for the
10450 .Va spam-interface .
10451 If this is set to the empty string then \*(UA will use the name of the
10460 .It Va spamfilter-ham , spamfilter-noham , \
10461 spamfilter-nospam , spamfilter-rate , spamfilter-spam
10462 \*(OP Command and argument hooks for the
10464 .Va spam-interface .
10466 .Sx "Handling spam"
10467 contains examples for some programs.
10470 .It Va spamfilter-rate-scanscore
10471 \*(OP Because of the generic nature of the
10474 spam scores are not supported for it by default, but if the \*(OPnal
10475 regular expression support is available then setting this variable can
10476 be used to overcome this restriction.
10477 It is interpreted as follows: first a number (digits) is parsed that
10478 must be followed by a semicolon
10480 and an extended regular expression.
10481 Then the latter is used to parse the first output line of the
10482 .Va spamfilter-rate
10483 hook, and, in case the evaluation is successful, the group that has been
10484 specified via the number is interpreted as a floating point scan score.
10488 .It Va ssl-ca-dir , ssl-ca-file
10489 \*(OP Specify the location of trusted CA certificates in PEM (Privacy
10490 Enhanced Mail) format as a directory and a file, respectively, for the
10491 purpose of verification of SSL/TLS server certificates.
10492 It is possible to set both, the file will be loaded immediately, the
10493 directory will be searched whenever no match has yet been found.
10494 The set of CA certificates which are built into the SSL/TLS library can
10495 be explicitly turned off by setting
10496 .Va ssl-ca-no-defaults ,
10497 and further fine-tuning is possible via
10500 .Xr SSL_CTX_load_verify_locations 3
10501 for more information.
10502 \*(UA will try to use the TLS/SNI (ServerNameIndication) extension when
10503 establishing TLS connections to servers identified with hostnames.
10507 .It Va ssl-ca-flags
10508 \*(OP Can be used to fine-tune behaviour of the X509 CA certificate
10509 storage, and the certificate verification that is used (also see
10511 The value is expected to consist of a comma-separated list of
10512 configuration directives, with any intervening whitespace being ignored.
10513 The directives directly map to flags that can be passed to
10514 .Xr X509_STORE_set_flags 3 ,
10515 which are usually defined in a file
10516 .Pa openssl/x509_vfy.h ,
10517 and the availability of which depends on the used SSL/TLS library
10518 version: a directive without mapping is ignored (error log subject to
10520 Directives currently understood (case-insensitively) include:
10523 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Cd BaNg"
10524 .It Cd no-alt-chains
10525 If the initial chain is not trusted, do not attempt to build an
10527 Setting this flag will make OpenSSL certificate verification match that
10528 of older OpenSSL versions, before automatic building and checking of
10529 alternative chains has been implemented; also see
10530 .Cd trusted-first .
10531 .It Cd no-check-time
10532 Do not check certificate/CRL validity against current time.
10533 .It Cd partial-chain
10534 By default partial, incomplete chains which cannot be verified up to the
10535 chain top, a self-signed root certificate, will not verify.
10536 With this flag set, a chain succeeds to verify if at least one signing
10537 certificate of the chain is in any of the configured trusted stores of
10539 The OpenSSL manual page
10540 .Xr SSL_CTX_load_verify_locations 3
10541 gives some advise how to manage your own trusted store of CA certificates.
10543 Disable workarounds for broken certificates.
10544 .It Cd trusted-first
10545 Try building a chain using issuers in the trusted store first to avoid
10546 problems with server-sent legacy intermediate certificates.
10547 Newer versions of OpenSSL support alternative chain checking and enable
10548 it by default, resulting in the same behaviour; also see
10549 .Cd no-alt-chains .
10554 .It Va ssl-ca-no-defaults
10555 \*(BO\*(OP Do not load the default CA locations that are built into the
10556 used to SSL/TLS library to verify SSL/TLS server certificates.
10559 .It Va ssl-cert-USER@HOST , ssl-cert-HOST , ssl-cert
10560 \*(OP Variable chain that sets the filename for a SSL/TLS client
10561 certificate required by some servers.
10562 This is a direct interface to the
10566 function of the OpenSSL library, if available.
10568 .Mx Va ssl-cipher-list
10569 .It Va ssl-cipher-list-USER@HOST , ssl-cipher-list-HOST , ssl-cipher-list
10570 \*(OP Specifies a list of ciphers for SSL/TLS connections.
10571 This is a direct interface to the
10575 function of the OpenSSL library, if available; see
10578 .Xr SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list 3
10579 for more information.
10580 By default \*(UA does not set a list of ciphers, in effect using a
10582 specific cipher (protocol standards ship with a list of acceptable
10583 ciphers), possibly cramped to what the actually used SSL/TLS library
10584 supports \(en the manual section
10585 .Sx "An example configuration"
10586 also contains a SSL/TLS use case.
10589 .It Va ssl-config-file
10590 \*(OP If this variable is set \*(UA will call
10591 .Xr CONF_modules_load_file 3
10592 to allow OpenSSL to be configured according to the host system wide
10594 If a non-empty value is given then this will be used to specify the
10595 configuration file to be used instead of the global OpenSSL default;
10596 note that in this case it is an error if the file cannot be loaded.
10597 The application name will always be passed as
10601 .It Va ssl-curves-USER@HOST , ssl-curves-HOST , ssl-curves
10602 \*(OP Specifies a list of supported curves for SSL/TLS connections.
10603 This is a direct interface to the
10607 function of the OpenSSL library, if available; see
10608 .Xr SSL_CTX_set1_curves_list 3
10609 for more information.
10610 By default \*(UA does not set a list of curves.
10614 .It Va ssl-crl-dir , ssl-crl-file
10615 \*(OP Specify a directory / a file, respectively that contains a CRL in
10616 PEM format to use when verifying SSL/TLS server certificates.
10619 .It Va ssl-key-USER@HOST , ssl-key-HOST , ssl-key
10620 \*(OP Variable chain that sets the filename for the private key of
10621 a SSL/TLS client certificate.
10622 If unset, the name of the certificate file is used.
10623 The file is expected to be in PEM format.
10624 This is a direct interface to the
10628 function of the OpenSSL library, if available.
10630 .It Va ssl-method-USER@HOST , ssl-method-HOST , ssl-method
10631 \*(OB\*(OP Please use the newer and more flexible
10633 instead: if both values are set,
10635 will take precedence!
10636 Can be set to the following values, the actually used
10638 specification to which it is mapped is shown in parenthesis:
10640 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, TLSv1.2 ) ,
10642 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, TLSv1.1 ) ,
10644 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, TLSv1 )
10647 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, SSLv3 ) ;
10652 and thus includes the SSLv3 protocol.
10653 Note that SSLv2 is no longer supported at all.
10655 .Mx Va ssl-protocol
10656 .It Va ssl-protocol-USER@HOST , ssl-protocol-HOST , ssl-protocol
10657 \*(OP Specify the used SSL/TLS protocol.
10658 This is a direct interface to the
10662 function of the OpenSSL library, if available;
10663 otherwise an \*(UA internal parser is used which understands the
10664 following subset of (case-insensitive) command strings:
10670 as well as the special value
10672 Multiple specifications may be given via a comma-separated list which
10673 ignores any whitespace.
10676 plus sign prefix will enable a protocol, a
10678 hyphen-minus prefix will disable it, so that
10680 will enable only the TLSv1.2 protocol.
10682 It depends upon the used TLS/SSL library which protocols are actually
10683 supported and which protocols are used if
10685 is not set, but note that SSLv2 is no longer supported at all and
10687 Especially for older protocols explicitly securing
10688 .Va ssl-cipher-list
10689 may be worthwile, see
10690 .Sx "An example configuration" .
10693 .It Va ssl-rand-egd
10694 \*(OP Gives the pathname to an entropy daemon socket, see
10696 Not all SSL/TLS libraries support this.
10699 .It Va ssl-rand-file
10700 \*(OP Gives the filename to a file with random entropy data, see
10701 .Xr RAND_load_file 3 .
10702 If this variable is not set, or set to the empty string, or if the
10703 .Sx "Filename transformations"
10705 .Xr RAND_file_name 3
10706 will be used to create the filename if, and only if,
10708 documents that the SSL PRNG is not yet sufficiently seeded.
10709 If \*(UA successfully seeded the SSL PRNG then it will update the file
10710 .Pf ( Xr RAND_write_file 3 ) .
10711 This variable is only used if
10713 is not set (or not supported by the SSL/TLS library).
10716 .It Va ssl-verify-USER@HOST , ssl-verify-HOST , ssl-verify
10717 \*(OP Variable chain that sets the action to be performed if an error
10718 occurs during SSL/TLS server certificate validation against the
10719 specified or default trust stores
10722 or the SSL/TLS library built-in defaults (unless usage disallowed via
10723 .Va ssl-ca-no-defaults ) ,
10724 and as fine-tuned via
10726 Valid (case-insensitive) values are
10728 (fail and close connection immediately),
10730 (ask whether to continue on standard input),
10732 (show a warning and continue),
10734 (do not perform validation).
10740 If only set without an assigned value, then this setting inhibits the
10746 header fields that include obvious references to \*(UA.
10747 There are two pitfalls associated with this:
10748 First, the message id of outgoing messages is not known anymore.
10749 Second, an expert may still use the remaining information in the header
10750 to track down the originating mail user agent.
10751 If set to the value
10757 suppression does not occur.
10762 (\*(OP) This specifies a comma-separated list of
10767 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" ,
10768 escape commas with reverse solidus) to be used to overwrite or define
10771 this variable will only be queried once at program startup and can
10772 thus only be specified in resource files or on the command line.
10775 String capabilities form
10777 pairs and are expected unless noted otherwise.
10778 Numerics have to be notated as
10780 where the number is expected in normal decimal notation.
10781 Finally, booleans do not have any value but indicate a true or false
10782 state simply by being defined or not; this indeed means that \*(UA
10783 does not support undefining an existing boolean.
10784 String capability values will undergo some expansions before use:
10785 for one notations like
10788 .Ql control-LETTER ,
10789 and for clarification purposes
10791 can be used to specify
10793 (the control notation
10795 could lead to misreadings when a left bracket follows, which it does for
10796 the standard CSI sequence);
10797 finally three letter octal sequences, as in
10800 To specify that a terminal supports 256-colours, and to define sequences
10801 that home the cursor and produce an audible bell, one might write:
10803 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10804 set termcap='Co#256,home=\eE[H,bel=^G'
10808 The following terminal capabilities are or may be meaningful for the
10809 operation of the built-in line editor or \*(UA in general:
10812 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Cd yay"
10814 .It Cd colors Ns \0or Cd Co
10816 numeric capability specifying the maximum number of colours.
10817 Note that \*(UA does not actually care about the terminal beside that,
10818 but always emits ANSI / ISO 6429 escape sequences.
10821 .It Cd rmcup Ns \0or Cd te Ns \0/ Cd smcup Ns \0or Cd ti
10824 .Cd enter_ca_mode ,
10825 respectively: exit and enter the alternative screen ca-mode,
10826 effectively turning \*(UA into a fullscreen application.
10827 This must be enabled explicitly by setting
10828 .Va termcap-ca-mode .
10830 .It Cd smkx Ns \0or Cd ks Ns \0/ Cd rmkx Ns \0or Cd ke
10834 respectively: enable and disable the keypad.
10835 This is always enabled if available, because it seems even keyboards
10836 without keypads generate other key codes for, e.g., cursor keys in that
10837 case, and only if enabled we see the codes that we are interested in.
10839 .It Cd ed Ns \0or Cd cd
10843 .It Cd clear Ns \0or Cd cl
10845 clear the screen and home cursor.
10846 (Will be simulated via
10851 .It Cd home Ns \0or Cd ho
10856 .It Cd el Ns \0or Cd ce
10858 clear to the end of line.
10859 (Will be simulated via
10861 plus repetitions of space characters.)
10863 .It Cd hpa Ns \0or Cd ch
10864 .Cd column_address :
10865 move the cursor (to the given column parameter) in the current row.
10866 (Will be simulated via
10872 .Cd carriage_return :
10873 move to the first column in the current row.
10874 The default built-in fallback is
10877 .It Cd cub1 Ns \0or Cd le
10879 move the cursor left one space (non-destructively).
10880 The default built-in fallback is
10883 .It Cd cuf1 Ns \0or Cd nd
10885 move the cursor right one space (non-destructively).
10886 The default built-in fallback is
10888 which is used by most terminals.
10896 Many more capabilities which describe key-sequences are documented for
10901 .It Va termcap-ca-mode
10902 \*(OP Allow usage of the
10906 terminal capabilities, effectively turning \*(UA into a fullscreen
10907 application, as documented for
10910 this variable will only be queried once at program startup and can
10911 thus only be specified in resource files or on the command line.
10914 .It Va termcap-disable
10915 \*(OP Disable any interaction with a terminal control library.
10916 If set only some generic fallback built-ins and possibly the content of
10918 describe the terminal to \*(UA.
10920 this variable will only be queried once at program startup and can
10921 thus only be specified in resource files or on the command line.
10925 If defined, gives the number of lines of a message to be displayed
10928 if unset, the first five lines are printed, if set to 0 the variable
10931 If the value is negative then its absolute value will be used for
10932 unsigned right shifting (see
10940 \*(BO If set then the
10942 command series will strip adjacent empty lines and quotations.
10946 The character set of the terminal \*(UA operates on,
10947 and the one and only supported character set that \*(UA can use if no
10948 character set conversion capabilities have been compiled into it,
10949 in which case it defaults to ISO-8859-1 unless it can deduce a value
10950 from the locale specified in the
10952 environment variable (if supported, see there for more).
10953 It defaults to UTF-8 if conversion is available.
10954 Refer to the section
10955 .Sx "Character sets"
10956 for the complete picture about character sets.
10959 .It Va typescript-mode
10960 \*(BO A special multiplex variable that disables all variables and
10961 settings which result in behaviour that interferes with running \*(UA in
10964 .Va colour-disable ,
10965 .Va line-editor-disable
10966 and (before startup completed only)
10967 .Va termcap-disable .
10968 Unsetting it does not restore the former state of the covered settings.
10972 For a safety-by-default policy \*(UA sets its process
10976 but this variable can be used to override that:
10977 set it to an empty value to do not change the (current) setting,
10978 otherwise the process file mode creation mask is updated to the new value.
10979 Child processes inherit the process file mode creation mask.
10982 .It Va user-HOST , user
10983 \*(IN Variable chain that sets a global fallback user name, which is
10984 used in case none has been given in the protocol and account-specific
10986 This variable defaults to the name of the user who runs \*(UA.
10990 \*(BO Setting this enables upward compatibility with \*(UA
10991 version 15.0 in respect to which configuration options are available and
10992 how they are handled.
10993 This manual uses \*(IN and \*(OU to refer to the new and the old way of
10994 doing things, respectively.
10998 \*(BO This setting, also controllable via the command line option
11000 causes \*(UA to be more verbose, e.g., it will display obsoletion
11001 warnings and SSL/TLS certificate chains.
11002 Even though marked \*(BO this option may be set twice in order to
11003 increase the level of verbosity even more, in which case even details of
11004 the actual message delivery and protocol conversations are shown.
11007 is sufficient to disable verbosity as such.
11014 .It Va version , version-date , version-major , version-minor , version-update
11015 \*(RO \*(UA version information: the first variable contains a string
11016 containing the complete version identification, the latter three contain
11017 only digits: the major, minor and update version numbers.
11018 The date is in ISO 8601 notation.
11019 The output of the command
11021 will include this information.
11024 .It Va writebackedited
11025 If this variable is set messages modified using the
11029 commands are written back to the current folder when it is quit;
11030 it is only honoured for writable folders in MBOX format, though.
11031 Note that the editor will be pointed to the raw message content in that
11032 case, i.e., neither MIME decoding nor decryption will have been
11033 performed, and proper RFC 4155
11035 quoting of newly added or edited content is also left as an excercise to
11038 .\" }}} (Variables)
11039 .\" }}} (INTERNAL VARIABLES)
11042 .\" .Sh ENVIRONMENT {{{
11046 .Dq environment variable
11047 should be considered an indication that these variables are either
11048 standardized as vivid parts of process environments, or that they are
11049 commonly found in there.
11050 The process environment is inherited from the
11052 once \*(UA is started, and unless otherwise explicitly noted handling of
11053 the following variables transparently integrates into that of the
11054 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
11055 from \*(UA's point of view.
11056 This means that, e.g., they can be managed via
11060 causing automatic program environment updates (to be inherited by
11061 newly created child processes).
11064 In order to transparently integrate other environment variables equally
11065 they need to be imported (linked) with the command
11067 This command can also be used to set and unset non-integrated
11068 environment variables from scratch, sufficient system support provided.
11069 The following example, applicable to a POSIX shell, sets the
11071 environment variable for \*(UA only, and beforehand exports the
11073 in order to affect any further processing in the running shell:
11075 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11076 $ EDITOR="vim -u ${HOME}/.vimrc"
11078 $ COLUMNS=80 \*(uA -R
11081 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ev BaNg"
11084 The user's preferred width in column positions for the terminal screen
11086 Queried and used once on program startup, actively managed for child
11087 processes and the MLE (see
11088 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
11089 in interactive mode thereafter.
11090 Ignored in non-interactive mode, which always uses 80 columns.
11094 The name of the (mailbox)
11096 to use for saving aborted messages if
11098 is set; this defaults to
11105 is set no output will be generated, otherwise the contents of the file
11110 Pathname of the text editor to use in the
11114 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
11115 A default editor is used if this value is not defined.
11119 The user's home directory.
11120 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment.
11125 .It Ev LC_ALL , LC_CTYPE , LANG
11126 \*(OP The (names in lookup order of the)
11130 which indicates the used
11131 .Sx "Character sets" .
11132 Runtime changes trigger automatic updates of the entire locale system,
11133 updating and overwriting also a
11139 The user's preferred number of lines on a page or the vertical screen
11140 or window size in lines.
11141 Queried and used once on program startup, actively managed for child
11142 processes in interactive mode thereafter.
11143 Ignored in non-interactive mode, which always uses 24 lines.
11147 Pathname of the directory lister to use in the
11149 command when operating on local mailboxes.
11152 (path search through
11157 Upon startup \*(UA will actively ensure that this variable refers to the
11158 name of the user who runs \*(UA, in order to be able to pass a verified
11159 name to any newly created child process.
11163 Is used as the users
11165 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
11169 This is assumed to be an absolute pathname.
11173 \*(OP Overrides the default path search for
11174 .Sx "The Mailcap files" ,
11175 which is defined in the standard RFC 1524 as
11176 .Ql ~/.mailcap:\:/etc/mailcap:\:/usr/etc/mailcap:\:/usr/local/etc/mailcap .
11177 .\" TODO we should have a mailcaps-default virtual RDONLY option!
11178 (\*(UA makes it a configuration option, however.)
11179 Note this is not a search path, but a path search.
11183 Is used as a startup file instead of
11186 When \*(UA scripts are invoked on behalf of other users,
11187 either this variable should be set to
11191 command line option should be used in order to avoid side-effects from
11192 reading their configuration files.
11193 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment.
11196 .It Ev MAILX_NO_SYSTEM_RC
11197 If this variable is set then reading of
11199 at startup is inhibited, i.e., the same effect is achieved as if \*(UA
11200 had been started up with the option
11202 (and according argument) or
11204 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment.
11208 The name of the users
11210 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
11212 A logical subset of the special
11213 .Sx "Filename transformations"
11219 Traditionally this MBOX is used as the file to save messages from the
11221 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
11222 that have been read.
11224 .Sx "Message states" .
11228 \*(IN\*(OP This variable overrides the default location of the user's
11234 Pathname of the program to use for backing the command
11238 variable enforces usage of a pager for output.
11239 The default paginator is
11241 (path search through
11244 \*(UA inspects the contents of this variable: if its contains the string
11246 then a non-existing environment variable
11253 dependent on whether terminal control support is available and whether
11254 that supports full (alternative) screen mode or not (also see
11255 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" ) .
11259 will optionally be set to
11266 A colon-separated list of directories that is searched by the shell when
11267 looking for commands, e.g.,
11268 .Ql /bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin .
11271 .It Ev POSIXLY_CORRECT
11272 This variable is automatically looked for upon startup, see
11278 The shell to use for the commands
11283 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
11284 and when starting subprocesses.
11285 A default shell is used if this environment variable is not defined.
11288 .It Ev SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
11289 This specifies a time in seconds since the Unix epoch (1970-01-01) to be
11290 used in place of the current time.
11291 This variable is looked up upon program startup, and its existence will
11292 switch \*(UA to a completely reproducible mode which causes
11293 deterministic random numbers, a special fixed (non-existent?)
11295 and more to be used and set.
11296 It is to be used during development or by software packagers.
11297 \*(ID Currently an invalid setting is only ignored, rather than causing
11298 a program abortion.
11300 .Dl $ SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH=`date +%s` \*(uA
11304 \*(OP The terminal type for which output is to be prepared.
11305 For extended colour and font control please refer to
11306 .Sx "Coloured display" ,
11307 and for terminal management in general to
11308 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" .
11312 Used as directory for temporary files instead of
11315 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment,
11316 but \*(UA will ensure at startup that this environment variable is
11317 updated to contain a usable temporary directory.
11323 (see there), but this variable is not standardized, should therefore not
11324 be used, and is only corrected if already set.
11328 Pathname of the text editor to use in the
11332 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
11340 .Bl -tag -width ".It Pa BaNg"
11342 File giving initial commands.
11345 System wide initialization file.
11349 \*(OP Personal MIME type handler definition file, see
11350 .Sx "The Mailcap files" .
11351 This location is part of the RFC 1524 standard search path, which is
11352 a configuration option and can be overridden via
11356 .It Pa /etc/mailcap
11357 \*(OP System wide MIME type handler definition file, see
11358 .Sx "The Mailcap files" .
11359 This location is part of the RFC 1524 standard search path, which is
11360 a configuration option and can be overridden via
11364 The default value for
11366 The actually used path is a configuration option.
11369 .It Pa ~/.mime.types
11370 Personal MIME types, see
11371 .Sx "The mime.types files" .
11372 The actually used path is a configuration option.
11375 .It Pa /etc/mime.types
11376 System wide MIME types, see
11377 .Sx "The mime.types files" .
11378 The actually used path is a configuration option.
11382 \*(IN\*(OP The default location of the users
11384 file \(en the section
11385 .Sx "The .netrc file"
11386 documents the file format.
11387 The actually used path is a configuration option and can be overridden via
11394 The actually used path is a compile-time constant.
11397 .\" .Ss "The mime.types files" {{{
11398 .Ss "The mime.types files"
11401 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments"
11402 \*(UA needs to learn about MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
11403 media types in order to classify message and attachment content.
11404 One source for them are
11406 files, the loading of which can be controlled by setting the variable
11407 .Va mimetypes-load-control .
11408 Another is the command
11410 which also offers access to \*(UAs MIME type cache.
11412 files have the following syntax:
11414 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11415 type/subtype extension [extension ...]
11416 # E.g., text/html html htm
11422 define the MIME media type, as standardized in RFC 2046:
11424 is used to declare the general type of data, while the
11426 specifies a specific format for that type of data.
11427 One or multiple filename
11429 s, separated by whitespace, can be bound to the media type format.
11430 Comments may be introduced anywhere on a line with a number sign
11432 causing the remaining line to be discarded.
11434 \*(UA also supports an extended, non-portable syntax in especially
11435 crafted files, which can be loaded via the alternative value syntax of
11436 .Va mimetypes-load-control ,
11437 and prepends an optional
11441 .Dl [type-marker ]type/subtype extension [extension ...]
11444 The following type markers are supported:
11447 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ar _n_u"
11449 Treat message parts with this content as plain text.
11454 Treat message parts with this content as HTML tagsoup.
11455 If the \*(OPal HTML-tagsoup-to-text converter is not available treat
11456 the content as plain text instead.
11460 but instead of falling back to plain text require an explicit content
11461 handler to be defined.
11466 for sending messages:
11468 .Va mime-allow-text-controls ,
11469 .Va mimetypes-load-control .
11470 For reading etc. messages:
11471 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" ,
11472 .Sx "The Mailcap files" ,
11474 .Va mime-counter-evidence ,
11475 .Va mimetypes-load-control ,
11476 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE ,
11477 .Va pipe-EXTENSION .
11480 .\" .Ss "The Mailcap files" {{{
11481 .Ss "The Mailcap files"
11483 .\" TODO MAILCAP DISABLED
11484 .Sy This feature is not available in v14.9.0, sorry!
11486 .Dq User Agent Configuration Mechanism
11487 which \*(UA \*(OPally supports (see
11488 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" ) .
11489 It defines a file format to be used to inform mail user agent programs
11490 about the locally-installed facilities for handling various data
11491 formats, i.e., about commands and how they can be used to display, edit
11492 et cetera MIME part contents, as well as a default path search that
11493 includes multiple possible locations of
11497 environment variable that can be used to overwrite that (repeating here
11498 that it is not a search path, but instead a path search specification).
11499 Any existing files will be loaded in sequence, appending any content to
11500 the list of MIME type handler directives.
11504 files consist of a set of newline separated entries.
11505 Comment lines start with a number sign
11507 (in the first column!) and are ignored.
11508 Empty lines are also ignored.
11509 All other lines form individual entries that must adhere to the syntax
11511 To extend a single entry (not comment) its line can be continued on
11512 follow lines if newline characters are
11514 by preceding them with the reverse solidus character
11516 The standard does not specify how leading whitespace of follow lines
11517 is to be treated, therefore \*(UA retains it.
11521 entries consist of a number of semicolon
11523 separated fields, and the reverse solidus
11525 character can be used to escape any following character including
11526 semicolon and itself.
11527 The first two fields are mandatory and must occur in the specified
11528 order, the remaining fields are optional and may appear in any order.
11529 Leading and trailing whitespace of content is ignored (removed).
11532 The first field defines the MIME
11534 the entry is about to handle (case-insensitively, and no reverse solidus
11535 escaping is possible in this field).
11536 If the subtype is specified as an asterisk
11538 the entry is meant to match all subtypes of the named type, e.g.,
11540 would match any audio type.
11541 The second field defines the shell command which shall be used to
11543 MIME parts of the given type; it is implicitly called the
11550 shell commands message (MIME part) data is passed via standard input
11551 unless the given shell command includes one or more instances of the
11554 in which case these instances will be replaced with a temporary filename
11555 and the data will have been stored in the file that is being pointed to.
11558 shell commands data is assumed to be generated on standard output unless
11559 the given command includes (one ore multiple)
11561 In any case any given
11563 format is replaced with a(n already) properly quoted filename.
11564 Note that when a command makes use of a temporary file via
11566 then \*(UA will remove it again, as if the
11567 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile ,
11568 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill
11570 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink
11571 flags had been set; see below for more.
11574 The optional fields either define a shell command or an attribute (flag)
11575 value, the latter being a single word and the former being a keyword
11576 naming the field followed by an equals sign
11578 succeeded by a shell command, and as usual for any
11580 content any whitespace surrounding the equals sign will be removed, too.
11581 Optional fields include the following:
11584 .Bl -tag -width ".It Cd BaNg"
11586 A program that can be used to compose a new body or body part in the
11588 (Currently unused.)
11590 .It Cd composetyped
11593 field, but is to be used when the composing program needs to specify the
11595 header field to be applied to the composed data.
11596 (Currently unused.)
11599 A program that can be used to edit a body or body part in the given
11601 (Currently unused.)
11604 A program that can be used to print a message or body part in the given
11606 (Currently unused.)
11609 Specifies a program to be run to test some condition, e.g., the machine
11610 architecture, or the window system in use, to determine whether or not
11611 this mailcap entry applies.
11612 If the test fails, a subsequent mailcap entry should be sought; also see
11613 .Cd x-mailx-test-once .
11616 .It Cd needsterminal
11617 This flag field indicates that the given shell command must be run on
11618 an interactive terminal.
11619 \*(UA will temporarily release the terminal to the given command in
11620 interactive mode, in non-interactive mode this entry will be entirely
11621 ignored; this flag implies
11622 .Cd x-mailx-noquote .
11625 .It Cd copiousoutput
11626 A flag field which indicates that the output of the
11628 command will be an extended stream of textual output that can be
11629 (re)integrated into \*(UA's normal visual display.
11630 It is mutually exclusive with
11631 .Cd needsterminal .
11633 .It Cd textualnewlines
11634 A flag field which indicates that this type of data is line-oriented and
11635 that, if encoded in
11637 all newlines should be converted to canonical form (CRLF) before
11638 encoding, and will be in that form after decoding.
11639 (Currently unused.)
11641 .It Cd nametemplate
11642 This field gives a filename format, in which
11644 will be replaced by a random string, the joined combination of which
11645 will be used as the filename denoted by
11646 .Ev MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY .
11647 One could specify that a GIF file being passed to an image viewer should
11648 have a name ending in
11651 .Ql nametemplate=%s.gif .
11652 Note that \*(UA ignores the name template unless that solely specifies
11653 a filename suffix that consists of (ASCII) alphabetic and numeric
11654 characters, the underscore and dot only.
11657 Names a file, in X11 bitmap (xbm) format, which points to an appropriate
11658 icon to be used to visually denote the presence of this kind of data.
11659 This field is not used by \*(UA.
11662 A textual description that describes this type of data.
11665 .It Cd x-mailx-even-if-not-interactive
11666 An extension flag test field \(em by default handlers without
11668 are entirely ignored in non-interactive mode, but if this flag is set
11669 then their use will be considered.
11670 It is an error if this flag is set for commands that use the flag
11671 .Cd needsterminal .
11674 .It Cd x-mailx-noquote
11675 An extension flag field that indicates that even a
11678 command shall not be used to generate message quotes
11679 (as it would be by default).
11682 .It Cd x-mailx-async
11683 Extension flag field that denotes that the given
11685 command shall be executed asynchronously, without blocking \*(UA.
11686 Cannot be used in conjunction with
11687 .Cd needsterminal .
11690 .It Cd x-mailx-test-once
11691 Extension flag which denotes whether the given
11693 command shall be evaluated once only and the (boolean) result be cached.
11694 This is handy if some global unchanging condition is to be queried, like
11695 .Dq running under the X Window System .
11698 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile
11699 Extension flag field that requests creation of a zero-sized temporary
11700 file, the name of which is to be placed in the environment variable
11701 .Ev MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY .
11702 It is an error to use this flag with commands that include a
11707 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill
11708 Normally the MIME part content is passed to the handler via standard
11709 input; if this flag is set then the data will instead be written into
11711 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile .
11712 In order to cause deletion of the temporary file you will have to set
11713 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink
11715 It is an error to use this flag with commands that include a
11720 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink
11721 Extension flag field that requests that the temporary file shall be
11722 deleted automatically when the command loop is entered again at latest.
11723 (Do not use this for asynchronous handlers.)
11724 It is an error to use this flag with commands that include a
11726 format, or in conjunction with
11727 .Cd x-mailx-async ,
11728 or without also setting
11729 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile
11731 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill .
11734 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-keep
11737 implies the three tmpfile related flags above, but if you want, e.g.,
11739 and deal with the temporary file yourself, you can add in this flag to
11741 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink .
11746 The standard includes the possibility to define any number of additional
11747 entry fields, prefixed by
11749 Flag fields apply to the entire
11751 entry \(em in some unusual cases, this may not be desirable, but
11752 differentiation can be accomplished via separate entries, taking
11753 advantage of the fact that subsequent entries are searched if an earlier
11754 one does not provide enough information.
11757 command needs to specify the
11761 command shall not, the following will help out the latter (with enabled
11765 level \*(UA will show information about handler evaluation):
11767 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11768 application/postscript; ps-to-terminal %s; needsterminal
11769 application/postscript; ps-to-terminal %s; compose=idraw %s
11773 In fields any occurrence of the format string
11775 will be replaced by the
11778 Named parameters from the
11780 field may be placed in the command execution line using
11782 followed by the parameter name and a closing
11785 The entire parameter should appear as a single command line argument,
11786 regardless of embedded spaces; thus:
11788 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11790 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary=42
11793 multipart/*; /usr/local/bin/showmulti \e
11794 %t %{boundary} ; composetyped = /usr/local/bin/makemulti
11796 # Executed shell command
11797 /usr/local/bin/showmulti multipart/mixed 42
11801 .\" TODO v15: Mailcap: %n,%F
11802 Note that \*(UA does not support handlers for multipart MIME parts as
11803 shown in this example (as of today).
11804 \*(UA does not support the additional formats
11808 An example file, also showing how to properly deal with the expansion of
11810 which includes any quotes that are necessary to make it a valid shell
11811 argument by itself and thus will cause undesired behaviour when placed
11812 in additional user-provided quotes:
11814 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11816 text/richtext; richtext %s; copiousoutput
11818 text/x-perl; perl -cWT %s
11820 application/pdf; \e
11822 trap "rm -f ${infile}" EXIT\e; \e
11823 trap "exit 75" INT QUIT TERM\e; \e
11825 x-mailx-async; x-mailx-tmpfile-keep
11827 application/*; echo "This is \e"%t\e" but \e
11828 is 50 \e% Greek to me" \e; < %s head -c 1024 | cat -vET; \e
11829 copiousoutput; x-mailx-noquote
11834 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" ,
11835 .Sx "The mime.types files" ,
11838 .Va mime-counter-evidence ,
11839 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE ,
11840 .Va pipe-EXTENSION .
11843 .\" .Ss "The .netrc file" {{{
11844 .Ss "The .netrc file"
11848 file contains user credentials for machine accounts.
11849 The default location in the user's
11851 directory may be overridden by the
11853 environment variable.
11854 The file consists of space, tabulator or newline separated tokens.
11855 \*(UA implements a parser that supports a superset of the original BSD
11856 syntax, but users should nonetheless be aware of portability glitches
11857 of that file format, shall their
11859 be usable across multiple programs and platforms:
11862 .Bl -bullet -compact
11864 BSD does not support single, but only double quotation marks, e.g.,
11865 .Ql password="pass with spaces" .
11867 BSD (only?) supports escaping of single characters via a reverse solidus
11868 (e.g., a space can be escaped via
11870 in- as well as outside of a quoted string.
11872 BSD does not require a final quotation mark of the last user input token.
11874 The original BSD (Berknet) parser also supported a format which allowed
11875 tokens to be separated with commas \(en whereas at least Hewlett-Packard
11876 still seems to support this syntax, \*(UA does not!
11878 As a non-portable extension some widely-used programs support
11879 shell-style comments: if an input line starts, after any amount of
11880 whitespace, with a number sign
11882 then the rest of the line is ignored.
11884 Whereas other programs may require that the
11886 file is accessible by only the user if it contains a
11888 token for any other
11892 \*(UA will always require these strict permissions.
11896 Of the following list of supported tokens \*(UA only uses (and caches)
11901 At runtime the command
11903 can be used to control \*(UA's
11907 .Bl -tag -width ".It Cd BaNg"
11908 .It Cd machine Ar name
11909 The hostname of the entries' machine, lowercase-normalized by \*(UA
11911 Any further file content, until either end-of-file or the occurrence
11916 first-class token is bound (only related) to the machine
11919 As an extension that should not be the cause of any worries
11920 \*(UA supports a single wildcard prefix for
11922 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11923 machine *.example.com login USER password PASS
11924 machine pop3.example.com login USER password PASS
11925 machine smtp.example.com login USER password PASS
11931 .Ql pop3.example.com ,
11935 .Ql local.smtp.example.com .
11936 Note that in the example neither
11937 .Ql pop3.example.com
11939 .Ql smtp.example.com
11940 will be matched by the wildcard, since the exact matches take
11941 precedence (it is however faster to specify it the other way around).
11944 This is the same as
11946 except that it is a fallback entry that is used shall none of the
11947 specified machines match; only one default token may be specified,
11948 and it must be the last first-class token.
11950 .It Cd login Ar name
11951 The user name on the remote machine.
11953 .It Cd password Ar string
11954 The user's password on the remote machine.
11956 .It Cd account Ar string
11957 Supply an additional account password.
11958 This is merely for FTP purposes.
11960 .It Cd macdef Ar name
11962 A macro is defined with the specified
11964 it is formed from all lines beginning with the next line and continuing
11965 until a blank line is (consecutive newline characters are) encountered.
11968 entries cannot be utilized by multiple machines, too, but must be
11969 defined following the
11971 they are intended to be used with.)
11974 exists, it is automatically run as the last step of the login process.
11975 This is merely for FTP purposes.
11982 .\" .Sh EXAMPLES {{{
11985 .\" .Ss "An example configuration" {{{
11986 .Ss "An example configuration"
11988 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11989 # This example assumes v15.0 compatibility mode
11992 # Request strict transport security checks!
11993 set ssl-verify=strict
11995 # Where are the up-to-date SSL certificates?
11996 # (Since we manage up-to-date ones explicitly, do not use any,
11997 # possibly outdated, default certificates shipped with OpenSSL)
11998 #set ssl-ca-dir=/etc/ssl/certs
11999 set ssl-ca-file=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
12000 set ssl-ca-no-defaults
12001 #set ssl-ca-flags=partial-chain
12002 wysh set smime-ca-file="${ssl-ca-file}" \e
12003 smime-ca-no-defaults #smime-ca-flags="${ssl-ca-flags}"
12005 # Do not use protocols older than TLS v1.2.
12006 # Change this only when the remote server does not support it:
12007 # maybe use ssl-protocol-HOST (or -USER@HOST) syntax to define
12008 # such explicit exceptions, then, e.g.
12009 # set ssl-protocol-exam.ple='-ALL,+TLSv1.1'
12010 set ssl-protocol='-ALL,+TLSv1.2'
12012 # Explicitly define the list of ciphers, which may improve security,
12013 # especially with protocols older than TLS v1.2. See ciphers(1).
12014 # Including "@STRENGTH" will sort the final list by algorithm strength.
12015 # In reality it is possibly best to only use ssl-cipher-list-HOST
12016 # (or -USER@HOST), as necessary, again..
12017 set ssl-cipher-list=TLSv1.2:!aNULL:!eNULL:@STRENGTH
12018 # - TLSv1.2:!aNULL:!eNULL:\e
12019 # ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:\e
12020 # DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:@STRENGTH
12021 # -ALL:!aNULL:!eNULL:!MEDIUM:!LOW:!MD5:!RC4:!EXPORT:@STRENGTH
12022 # Especially with TLSv1.3 curves selection may be desired:
12023 #set ssl-curves=P-521:P-384:P-256
12025 # Essential setting: select allowed character sets
12026 set sendcharsets=utf-8,iso-8859-1
12028 # A very kind option: when replying to a message, first try to
12029 # use the same encoding that the original poster used herself!
12030 set reply-in-same-charset
12032 # When replying, do not merge From: and To: of the original message
12033 # into To:. Instead old From: -> new To:, old To: -> merge Cc:.
12034 set recipients-in-cc
12036 # When sending messages, wait until the Mail-Transfer-Agent finishs.
12037 # Only like this you will be able to see errors reported through the
12038 # exit status of the MTA (including the built-in SMTP one)!
12041 # Only use built-in MIME types, no mime.types(5) files
12042 set mimetypes-load-control
12044 # Default directory where we act in (relative to $HOME)
12046 # A leading "+" (often) means: under *folder*
12047 # *record* is used to save copies of sent messages
12048 set MBOX=+mbox.mbox DEAD=+dead.txt \e
12049 record=+sent.mbox record-files record-resent
12051 # Make "file mymbox" and "file myrec" go to..
12052 shortcut mymbox %:+mbox.mbox myrec +sent.mbox
12054 # Not really optional, e.g., for S/MIME
12055 set from='Your Name <address@exam.ple>'
12057 # It may be necessary to set hostname and/or smtp-hostname
12058 # if the "SERVER" of mta and "domain" of from do not match.
12059 # The `urlencode' command can be used to encode USER and PASS
12060 set mta=(smtps?|submission)://[USER[:PASS]@]SERVER[:PORT] \e
12061 smtp-auth=login/plain... \e
12064 # Never refuse to start into interactive mode, and more
12066 colour-pager crt= \e
12067 followup-to followup-to-honour=ask-yes \e
12068 history-file=+.\*(uAhist history-size=-1 history-gabby \e
12069 mime-counter-evidence=0xE \e
12070 prompt='?\e?!\e![\e${account}#\e${mailbox-display}]? ' \e
12071 reply-to-honour=ask-yes \e
12074 # Only include the selected header fields when typing messages
12075 headerpick type retain from_ date from to cc subject \e
12076 message-id mail-followup-to reply-to
12077 # ...when forwarding messages
12078 headerpick forward retain subject date from to cc
12079 # ...when saving message, etc.
12080 #headerpick save ignore ^Original-.*$ ^X-.*$
12082 # Some mailing lists
12083 mlist '@xyz-editor\e.xyz$' '@xyzf\e.xyz$'
12084 mlsubscribe '^xfans@xfans\e.xyz$'
12086 # Handle a few file extensions (to store MBOX databases)
12087 filetype bz2 'bzip2 -dc' 'bzip2 -zc' \e
12088 gz 'gzip -dc' 'gzip -c' xz 'xz -dc' 'xz -zc' \e
12089 zst 'zstd -dc' 'zstd -19 -zc' \e
12090 zst.pgp 'gpg -d | zstd -dc' 'zstd -19 -zc | gpg -e'
12092 # A real life example of a very huge free mail provider
12093 # Instead of directly placing content inside `account',
12094 # we `define' a macro: like that we can switch "accounts"
12095 # from within *on-compose-splice*, for example!
12097 set folder=~/spool/XooglX inbox=+syste.mbox sent=+sent
12098 set from='Your Name <address@examp.ple>'
12099 set mta=smtp://USER:PASS@smtp.gmXil.com smtp-use-starttls
12105 # Here is a pretty large one which does not allow sending mails
12106 # if there is a domain name mismatch on the SMTP protocol level,
12107 # which would bite us if the value of from does not match, e.g.,
12108 # for people who have a sXXXXeforge project and want to speak
12109 # with the mailing list under their project account (in from),
12110 # still sending the message through their normal mail provider
12112 set folder=~/spool/XandeX inbox=+syste.mbox sent=+sent
12113 set from='Your Name <address@exam.ple>'
12114 set mta=smtps://USER:PASS@smtp.yaXXex.ru:465 \e
12115 hostname=yaXXex.com smtp-hostname=
12121 # Create some new commands so that, e.g., `ls /tmp' will..
12122 commandalias lls '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFlrS'
12123 commandalias llS '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFlS'
12125 # We do not support gpg(1) directly yet. But simple --clearsign'd
12126 # message parts can be dealt with as follows:
12129 wysh set pipe-text/plain=$'@*#++=@\e
12130 < "${MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}" awk \e
12131 -v TMPFILE="${MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}" \e'\e
12133 /^-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----/,/^$/ {\e
12136 print "--- GPG --verify ---";\e
12137 system("gpg --verify " TMPFILE " 2>&1");\e
12138 print "--- GPG --verify ---";\e
12142 /^-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----/,\e
12143 /^-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----/{\e
12150 commandalias V '\e'call V
12154 When storing passwords in
12156 appropriate permissions should be set on this file with
12157 .Ql $ chmod 0600 \*(ur .
12160 is available user credentials can be stored in the central
12162 file instead; e.g., here is a different version of the example account
12163 that sets up SMTP and POP3:
12165 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12167 set folder=~/spool/XandeX inbox=+syste.mbox sent=+sent
12168 set from='Your Name <address@exam.ple>'
12170 # Load an encrypted ~/.netrc by uncommenting the next line
12171 #set netrc-pipe='gpg -qd ~/.netrc.pgp'
12173 set mta=smtps://smtp.yXXXXx.ru:465 \e
12174 smtp-hostname= hostname=yXXXXx.com
12175 set pop3-keepalive=240 pop3-no-apop-pop.yXXXXx.ru
12176 commandalias xp fi pop3s://pop.yXXXXx.ru
12188 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12189 machine *.yXXXXx.ru login USER password PASS
12193 This configuration should now work just fine:
12196 .Dl $ echo text | \*(uA -dvv -AXandeX -s Subject user@exam.ple
12199 .\" .Ss "Signed and encrypted messages with S/MIME" {{{
12200 .Ss "Signed and encrypted messages with S/MIME"
12202 \*(OP S/MIME provides two central mechanisms:
12203 message signing and message encryption.
12204 A signed message contains some data in addition to the regular text.
12205 The data can be used to verify that the message was sent using a valid
12206 certificate, that the sender's address in the message header matches
12207 that in the certificate, and that the message text has not been altered.
12208 Signing a message does not change its regular text;
12209 it can be read regardless of whether the recipient's software is able to
12213 It is thus usually possible to sign all outgoing messages if so desired.
12214 Encryption, in contrast, makes the message text invisible for all people
12215 except those who have access to the secret decryption key.
12216 To encrypt a message, the specific recipient's public encryption key
12218 It is therefore not possible to send encrypted mail to people unless their
12219 key has been retrieved from either previous communication or public key
12221 A message should always be signed before it is encrypted.
12222 Otherwise, it is still possible that the encrypted message text is
12226 A central concept to S/MIME is that of the certification authority (CA).
12227 A CA is a trusted institution that issues certificates.
12228 For each of these certificates it can be verified that it really
12229 originates from the CA, provided that the CA's own certificate is
12231 A set of CA certificates is usually delivered with OpenSSL and installed
12233 If you trust the source of your OpenSSL software installation,
12234 this offers reasonable security for S/MIME on the Internet.
12236 .Va smime-ca-no-defaults
12237 to avoid using the default certificate and point
12241 to a trusted pool of certificates.
12242 In general, a certificate cannot be more secure than the method its CA
12243 certificate has been retrieved with.
12246 The first thing you need for participating in S/MIME message exchange is
12247 your personal certificate, including a private key.
12248 The certificate contains public information, in particular your name and
12249 your email address(es), and the public key that is used by others to
12250 encrypt messages for you,
12251 and to verify signed messages they supposedly received from you.
12252 The certificate is included in each signed message you send.
12253 The private key must be kept secret.
12254 It is used to decrypt messages that were previously encrypted with your
12255 public key, and to sign messages.
12258 For personal use it is recommended that you get a S/MIME certificate
12259 from one of the major CAs on the Internet using your WWW browser.
12260 Many CAs offer such certificates for free.
12262 .Lk https://www.CAcert.org
12263 which issues client and server certificates to members of their
12264 community for free; their root certificate
12265 .Pf ( Lk https://\:www.cacert.org/\:certs/\:root.crt )
12266 is often not in the default set of trusted CA root certificates, though,
12267 which means you will have to download their root certificate separately
12268 and ensure it is part of our S/MIME certificate validation chain by
12271 or as a vivid member of the
12272 .Va smime-ca-file .
12273 But let us take a step-by-step tour on how to setup S/MIME with
12274 a certificate from CAcert.org despite this situation!
12277 First of all you will have to become a member of the CAcert.org
12278 community, simply by registrating yourself via the web interface.
12279 Once you are, create and verify all email addresses you want to be able
12280 to create signed and encrypted messages for/with using the corresponding
12281 entries of the web interface.
12282 Now ready to create S/MIME certificates, so let us create a new
12283 .Dq client certificate ,
12284 ensure to include all email addresses that should be covered by the
12285 certificate in the following web form, and also to use your name as the
12289 Create a private key and a certificate request on your local computer
12290 (please see the manual pages of the used commands for more in-depth
12291 knowledge on what the used arguments etc. do):
12294 .Dl openssl req -nodes -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout key.pem -out creq.pem
12297 Afterwards copy-and-paste the content of
12299 into the certificate-request (CSR) field of the web form on the
12300 CAcert.org website (you may need to unfold some
12301 .Dq advanced options
12302 to see the corresponding text field).
12303 This last step will ensure that your private key (which never left your
12304 box) and the certificate belong together (through the public key that
12305 will find its way into the certificate via the certificate-request).
12306 You are now ready and can create your CAcert certified certificate.
12307 Download and store or copy-and-paste it as
12312 In order to use your new S/MIME setup a combined private key/public key
12313 (certificate) file has to be created:
12316 .Dl cat key.pem pub.crt > ME@HERE.com.paired
12319 This is the file \*(UA will work with.
12320 If you have created your private key with a passphrase then \*(UA will
12321 ask you for it whenever a message is signed or decrypted.
12322 Set the following variables to henceforth use S/MIME (setting
12324 is of interest for verification only):
12326 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12327 set smime-ca-file=ALL-TRUSTED-ROOT-CERTS-HERE \e
12328 smime-sign-cert=ME@HERE.com.paired \e
12329 smime-sign-message-digest=SHA256 \e
12334 From each signed message you send, the recipient can fetch your
12335 certificate and use it to send encrypted mail back to you.
12336 Accordingly if somebody sends you a signed message, you can do the same,
12339 command to check the validity of the certificate.
12342 Variables of interest for S/MIME signing:
12344 .Va smime-ca-file ,
12345 .Va smime-ca-flags ,
12346 .Va smime-ca-no-defaults ,
12347 .Va smime-crl-dir ,
12348 .Va smime-crl-file ,
12350 .Va smime-sign-cert ,
12351 .Va smime-sign-include-certs
12353 .Va smime-sign-message-digest .
12356 After it has been verified save the certificate via
12358 and tell \*(UA that it should use it for encryption for further
12359 communication with that somebody:
12361 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12363 set smime-encrypt-USER@HOST=FILENAME \e
12364 smime-cipher-USER@HOST=AES256
12368 Additional variables of interest for S/MIME en- and decryption:
12371 .Va smime-encrypt-USER@HOST .
12374 You should carefully consider if you prefer to store encrypted messages
12376 If you do, anybody who has access to your mail folders can read them,
12377 but if you do not, you might be unable to read them yourself later if
12378 you happen to lose your private key.
12381 command saves messages in decrypted form, while the
12385 commands leave them encrypted.
12388 Note that neither S/MIME signing nor encryption applies to message
12389 subjects or other header fields yet.
12390 Thus they may not contain sensitive information for encrypted messages,
12391 and cannot be trusted even if the message content has been verified.
12392 When sending signed messages,
12393 it is recommended to repeat any important header information in the
12397 .\" .Ss "Using CRLs with S/MIME or SSL/TLS" {{{
12398 .Ss "Using CRLs with S/MIME or SSL/TLS"
12400 \*(OP Certification authorities (CAs) issue certificate revocation
12401 lists (CRLs) on a regular basis.
12402 These lists contain the serial numbers of certificates that have been
12403 declared invalid after they have been issued.
12404 Such usually happens because the private key for the certificate has
12406 because the owner of the certificate has left the organization that is
12407 mentioned in the certificate, etc.
12408 To seriously use S/MIME or SSL/TLS verification,
12409 an up-to-date CRL is required for each trusted CA.
12410 There is otherwise no method to distinguish between valid and
12411 invalidated certificates.
12412 \*(UA currently offers no mechanism to fetch CRLs, nor to access them on
12413 the Internet, so they have to be retrieved by some external mechanism.
12416 \*(UA accepts CRLs in PEM format only;
12417 CRLs in DER format must be converted, like, e.\|g.:
12420 .Dl $ openssl crl \-inform DER \-in crl.der \-out crl.pem
12423 To tell \*(UA about the CRLs, a directory that contains all CRL files
12424 (and no other files) must be created.
12429 variables, respectively, must then be set to point to that directory.
12430 After that, \*(UA requires a CRL to be present for each CA that is used
12431 to verify a certificate.
12434 .\" .Ss "Handling spam" {{{
12435 .Ss "Handling spam"
12437 \*(OP \*(UA can make use of several spam interfaces for the purpose of
12438 identification of, and, in general, dealing with spam messages.
12439 A precondition of most commands in order to function is that the
12441 variable is set to one of the supported interfaces.
12442 Once messages have been identified as spam their (volatile)
12444 state can be prompted: the
12448 message specifications will address respective messages and their
12450 entries will be used when displaying the
12452 in the header display.
12457 rates the given messages and sets their
12460 If the spam interface offers spam scores those can also be displayed in
12461 the header display by including the
12471 will interact with the Bayesian filter of the chosen interface and learn
12472 the given messages as
12476 respectively; the last command can be used to cause
12478 of messages; it adheres to their current
12480 state and thus reverts previous teachings.
12485 will simply set and clear, respectively, the mentioned volatile
12487 message flag, without any interface interaction.
12496 requires a running instance of the
12498 server in order to function, started with the option
12500 shall Bayesian filter learning be possible.
12502 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12503 $ spamd -i localhost:2142 -i /tmp/.spamsock -d [-L] [-l]
12504 $ spamd --listen=localhost:2142 --listen=/tmp/.spamsock \e
12505 --daemonize [--local] [--allow-tell]
12509 Thereafter \*(UA can make use of these interfaces:
12511 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12512 $ \*(uA -Sspam-interface=spamc -Sspam-maxsize=500000 \e
12513 -Sspamc-command=/usr/local/bin/spamc \e
12514 -Sspamc-arguments="-U /tmp/.spamsock" -Sspamc-user=
12516 $ \*(uA -Sspam-interface=spamc -Sspam-maxsize=500000 \e
12517 -Sspamc-command=/usr/local/bin/spamc \e
12518 -Sspamc-arguments="-d localhost -p 2142" -Sspamc-user=
12522 Using the generic filter approach allows usage of programs like
12524 Here is an example, requiring it to be accessible via
12527 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12528 $ \*(uA -Sspam-interface=filter -Sspam-maxsize=500000 \e
12529 -Sspamfilter-ham="bogofilter -n" \e
12530 -Sspamfilter-noham="bogofilter -N" \e
12531 -Sspamfilter-nospam="bogofilter -S" \e
12532 -Sspamfilter-rate="bogofilter -TTu 2>/dev/null" \e
12533 -Sspamfilter-spam="bogofilter -s" \e
12534 -Sspamfilter-rate-scanscore="1;^(.+)$"
12538 Because messages must exist on local storage in order to be scored (or
12539 used for Bayesian filter training), it is possibly a good idea to
12540 perform the local spam check last:
12542 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12543 define spamdelhook {
12545 spamset (header x-dcc-brand-metrics "bulk")
12546 # Server-side spamassassin(1)
12547 spamset (header x-spam-flag "YES")
12548 del :s # TODO we HAVE to be able to do `spamrate :u ! :sS'
12549 move :S +maybe-spam
12552 move :S +maybe-spam
12554 set folder-hook-FOLDER=spamdelhook
12558 See also the documentation for the variables
12559 .Va spam-interface , spam-maxsize ,
12560 .Va spamc-command , spamc-arguments , spamc-user ,
12561 .Va spamfilter-ham , spamfilter-noham , spamfilter-nospam , \
12564 .Va spamfilter-rate-scanscore .
12572 In general it is a good idea to turn on
12578 twice) if something does not work well.
12579 Very often a diagnostic message can be produced that leads to the
12580 problems' solution.
12582 .\" .Ss "\*(UA shortly hangs on startup" {{{
12583 .Ss "\*(UA shortly hangs on startup"
12585 This can have two reasons, one is the necessity to wait for a file lock
12586 and cannot be helped, the other being that \*(UA calls the function
12588 in order to query the nodename of the box (sometimes the real one is
12589 needed instead of the one represented by the internal variable
12591 One may have varying success by ensuring that the real hostname and
12595 or, more generally, that the name service is properly setup \(en
12598 return the expected value?
12599 Does this local hostname have a domain suffix?
12600 RFC 6762 standardized the link-local top-level domain
12602 try again after adding an (additional) entry with this extension.
12605 .\" .Ss "I cannot login to Google mail aka GMail" {{{
12606 .Ss "I cannot login to Google mail aka GMail"
12608 Since 2014 some free service providers classify programs as
12610 unless they use a special authentification method (OAuth 2.0) which
12611 was not standardized for non-HTTP protocol authentication token query
12612 until August 2015 (RFC 7628).
12615 Different to Kerberos / GSSAPI, which is developed since the mid of the
12616 1980s, where a user can easily create a local authentication ticket for
12617 her- and himself with the locally installed
12619 program, that protocol has no such local part but instead requires
12620 a world-wide-web query to create or fetch a token; since there is no
12621 local cache this query would have to be performed whenever \*(UA is
12622 invoked (in interactive sessions situation may differ).
12625 \*(UA does not support OAuth.
12626 Because of this it is necessary to declare \*(UA a
12627 .Dq less secure app
12628 (on the providers account web page) in order to read and send mail.
12629 However, it also seems possible to take the following steps instead:
12634 give the provider the number of a mobile phone,
12637 .Dq 2-Step Verification ,
12639 create an application specific password (16 characters), and
12641 use that special password instead of the real Google account password in
12642 \*(UA (for more on that see the section
12643 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" ) .
12647 .\" .Ss "Not \(dqdefunctional\(dq, but the editor key does not work" {{{
12648 .Ss "Not \(dqdefunctional\(dq, but the editor key does not work"
12650 It can happen that the terminal library (see
12651 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor",
12654 reports different codes than the terminal really sends, in which case
12655 \*(UA will tell that a key binding is functional, but will not be able to
12656 recognize it because the received data does not match anything expected.
12661 ings will show the byte sequences that are expected.
12664 To overcome the situation, use, e.g., the program
12666 in conjunction with the command line option
12668 if available, to see the byte sequences which are actually produced
12669 by keypresses, and use the variable
12671 to make \*(UA aware of them.
12672 E.g., the terminal this is typed on produces some false sequences, here
12673 an example showing the shifted home key:
12675 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12678 # 1B 5B=[ 31=1 3B=; 32=2 48=H
12683 ? \*(uA -v -Stermcap='kHOM=\eE[H'
12692 .\" .Sh "IMAP CLIENT" {{{
12695 \*(OPally there is IMAP client support available.
12696 This part of the program is obsolete and will vanish in v15 with the
12697 large MIME and I/O layer rewrite, because it uses old-style blocking I/O
12698 and makes excessive use of signal based long code jumps.
12699 Support can hopefully be readded later based on a new-style I/O, with
12700 SysV signal handling.
12701 In fact the IMAP support had already been removed from the codebase, but
12702 was reinstantiated on user demand: in effect the IMAP code is at the
12703 level of \*(UA v14.8.16 (with
12705 being the sole exception), and should be treated with some care.
12712 protocol prefixes, and an IMAP-based
12715 IMAP URLs (paths) undergo inspections and possible transformations
12716 before use (and the command
12718 can be used to manually apply them to any given argument).
12719 Hierarchy delimiters are normalized, a step which is configurable via the
12721 variable chain, but defaults to the first seen delimiter otherwise.
12722 \*(UA supports internationalised IMAP names, and en- and decodes the
12723 names from and to the
12725 as necessary and possible.
12726 If a mailbox name is expanded (see
12727 .Sx "Filename transformations" )
12728 to an IMAP mailbox, all names that begin with `+' then refer to IMAP
12729 mailboxes below the
12731 target box, while folder names prefixed by `@' refer to folders below
12732 the hierarchy base.
12735 Note: some IMAP servers do not accept the creation of mailboxes in
12736 the hierarchy base, but require that they are created as subfolders of
12737 `INBOX' \(en with such servers a folder name of the form
12739 .Dl imaps://mylogin@imap.myisp.example/INBOX.
12741 should be used (the last character is the server's hierarchy
12743 The following IMAP-specific commands exist:
12746 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ic BaNg"
12749 Only applicable to cached IMAP mailboxes;
12750 takes a message list and reads the specified messages into the IMAP
12755 If operating in disconnected mode on an IMAP mailbox,
12756 switch to online mode and connect to the mail server while retaining
12757 the mailbox status.
12758 See the description of the
12760 variable for more information.
12764 If operating in online mode on an IMAP mailbox,
12765 switch to disconnected mode while retaining the mailbox status.
12766 See the description of the
12769 A list of messages may optionally be given as argument;
12770 the respective messages are then read into the cache before the
12771 connection is closed, thus
12773 makes the entire mailbox available for disconnected use.
12777 Sends command strings directly to the current IMAP server.
12778 \*(UA operates always in IMAP `selected state' on the current mailbox;
12779 commands that change this will produce undesirable results and should be
12781 Useful IMAP commands are:
12782 .Bl -tag -offset indent -width ".Ic getquotearoot"
12784 Takes the name of an IMAP mailbox as an argument and creates it.
12786 (RFC 2087) Takes the name of an IMAP mailbox as an argument
12787 and prints the quotas that apply to the mailbox.
12788 Not all IMAP servers support this command.
12790 (RFC 2342) Takes no arguments and prints the Personal Namespaces,
12791 the Other User's Namespaces and the Shared Namespaces.
12792 Each namespace type is printed in parentheses;
12793 if there are multiple namespaces of the same type,
12794 inner parentheses separate them.
12795 For each namespace a prefix and a hierarchy separator is listed.
12796 Not all IMAP servers support this command.
12801 Perform IMAP path transformations.
12805 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) ,
12806 and manages the error number
12808 The first argument specifies the operation:
12810 normalizes hierarchy delimiters (see
12812 and converts the strings from the locale
12814 to the internationalized variant used by IMAP,
12816 performs the reverse operation.
12821 The following IMAP-specific internal variables exist:
12824 .Bl -tag -width ".It Va BaNg"
12826 .It Va disconnected
12827 \*(BO When an IMAP mailbox is selected and this variable is set,
12828 no connection to the server is initiated.
12829 Instead, data is obtained from the local cache (see
12832 Mailboxes that are not present in the cache
12833 and messages that have not yet entirely been fetched from the server
12835 to fetch all messages in a mailbox at once,
12837 .No ` Ns Li copy * /dev/null Ns '
12838 can be used while still in connected mode.
12839 Changes that are made to IMAP mailboxes in disconnected mode are queued
12840 and committed later when a connection to that server is made.
12841 This procedure is not completely reliable since it cannot be guaranteed
12842 that the IMAP unique identifiers (UIDs) on the server still match the
12843 ones in the cache at that time.
12846 when this problem occurs.
12848 .It Va disconnected-USER@HOST
12849 The specified account is handled as described for the
12852 but other accounts are not affected.
12855 .It Va imap-auth-USER@HOST , imap-auth
12856 Sets the IMAP authentication method.
12857 Valid values are `login' for the usual password-based authentication
12859 `cram-md5', which is a password-based authentication that does not send
12860 the password over the network in clear text,
12861 and `gssapi' for GSS-API based authentication.
12865 Enables caching of IMAP mailboxes.
12866 The value of this variable must point to a directory that is either
12867 existent or can be created by \*(UA.
12868 All contents of the cache can be deleted by \*(UA at any time;
12869 it is not safe to make assumptions about them.
12872 .It Va imap-delim-USER@HOST , imap-delim-HOST , imap-delim
12873 The hierarchy separator used by the IMAP server.
12874 Whenever an IMAP path is specified it will undergo normalization.
12875 One of the normalization steps is the squeezing and adjustment of
12876 hierarchy separators.
12877 If this variable is set, any occurrence of any character of the given
12878 value that exists in the path will be replaced by the first member of
12879 the value; an empty value will cause the default to be used, it is
12881 If not set, we will reuse the first hierarchy separator character that
12882 is discovered in a user-given mailbox name.
12884 .Mx Va imap-keepalive
12885 .It Va imap-keepalive-USER@HOST , imap-keepalive-HOST , imap-keepalive
12886 IMAP servers may close the connection after a period of
12887 inactivity; the standard requires this to be at least 30 minutes,
12888 but practical experience may vary.
12889 Setting this variable to a numeric `value' greater than 0 causes
12890 a `NOOP' command to be sent each `value' seconds if no other operation
12894 .It Va imap-list-depth
12895 When retrieving the list of folders on an IMAP server, the
12897 command stops after it has reached a certain depth to avoid possible
12899 The value of this variable sets the maximum depth allowed.
12901 If the folder separator on the current IMAP server is a slash `/',
12902 this variable has no effect and the
12904 command does not descend to subfolders.
12906 .Mx Va imap-use-starttls
12907 .It Va imap-use-starttls-USER@HOST , imap-use-starttls-HOST , imap-use-starttls
12908 Causes \*(UA to issue a `STARTTLS' command to make an unencrypted
12909 IMAP session SSL/TLS encrypted.
12910 This functionality is not supported by all servers,
12911 and is not used if the session is already encrypted by the IMAPS method.
12916 .\" .Sh "SEE ALSO" {{{
12926 .Xr spamassassin 1 ,
12935 .Xr mailwrapper 8 ,
12940 .\" .Sh HISTORY {{{
12943 M. Douglas McIlroy writes in his article
12944 .Dq A Research UNIX Reader: Annotated Excerpts \
12945 from the Programmer's Manual, 1971-1986
12948 command already appeared in First Edition
12952 .Bd -ragged -offset indent
12953 Electronic mail was there from the start.
12954 Never satisfied with its exact behavior, everybody touched it at one
12955 time or another: to assure the safety of simultaneous access, to improve
12956 privacy, to survive crashes, to exploit uucp, to screen out foreign
12957 freeloaders, or whatever.
12958 Not until v7 did the interface change (Thompson).
12959 Later, as mail became global in its reach, Dave Presotto took charge and
12960 brought order to communications with a grab-bag of external networks
12966 Mail was written in 1978 by Kurt Shoens and developed as part of the
12969 distribution until 1995.
12970 Mail has then seen further development in open source
12972 variants, noticeably by Christos Zoulas in
12974 Based upon this Nail, later Heirloom Mailx, was developed by Gunnar
12975 Ritter in the years 2000 until 2008.
12976 Since 2012 S-nail is maintained by Steffen (Daode) Nurpmeso.
12977 This man page is derived from
12978 .Dq The Mail Reference Manual
12979 that was originally written by Kurt Shoens.
12985 .An "Kurt Shoens" ,
12986 .An "Edward Wang" ,
12987 .An "Keith Bostic" ,
12988 .An "Christos Zoulas" ,
12989 .An "Gunnar Ritter" ,
12990 .An "Steffen Nurpmeso" .
12997 provide contact addresses:
12999 .\" v15-compat: drop eval as `mail' will expand variable?
13000 .Dl ? echo $contact-web; eval mail $contact-mail
13003 .\" .Sh CAVEATS {{{
13006 \*(ID Interrupting an operation via
13010 from anywhere else but a command prompt is very problematic and likely
13011 to leave the program in an undefined state: many library functions
13012 cannot deal with the
13014 that this software (still) performs; even though efforts have been taken
13015 to address this, no sooner but in v15 it will have been worked out:
13016 interruptions have not been disabled in order to allow forceful breakage
13017 of hanging network connections, for example (all this is unrelated to
13021 The SMTP and POP3 protocol support of \*(UA is very basic.
13022 Also, if it fails to contact its upstream SMTP server, it will not make
13023 further attempts to transfer the message at a later time (setting
13028 If this is a concern, it might be better to set up a local SMTP server
13029 that is capable of message queuing.
13035 After deleting some message of a POP3 mailbox the header summary falsely
13036 claims that there are no messages to display, one needs to perform
13037 a scroll or dot movement to restore proper state.
13039 In threaded display a power user may encounter crashes very
13040 occasionally (this is may and very).
13044 in the source repository lists future directions.