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-pre4 / 2017-04-13
36 .ds VV \\%v14.9.0-pre4
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()
78 .Op : Ns Fl a Ar attachment Ns \&:
79 .Op : Ns Fl b Ar bcc-addr Ns \&:
80 .Op : Ns Fl c Ar cc-addr Ns \&:
81 .Op Fl M Ar type | Fl m Ar file | Fl q Ar file | Fl t
84 .Fl S Ar var Ns Op Ns = Ns Ar value Ns
87 .Op : Ns Fl X Ar cmd Ns \&:
89 .Pf : Ar to-addr Ns \&:
90 .Op Fl Fl \~ Ns : Ns Ar mta-option Ns \&:
100 .Fl S Ar var Ns Op Ns = Ns Ar value Ns
103 .Op : Ns Fl X Ar cmd Ns \&:
104 .Op Fl Fl \~ Ns : Ns Ar mta-option Ns \&:
113 .Op Fl r Ar from-addr
115 .Fl S Ar var Ns Op Ns = Ns Ar value Ns
117 .Op : Ns Fl X Ar cmd Ns \&:
119 .Op Fl Fl \~ Ns : Ns Ar mta-option Ns \&:
124 .Mx -toc -tree html pdf ps xhtml
127 .\" .Sh DESCRIPTION {{{
130 .Bd -filled -compact -offset indent
131 .Sy Compatibility note:
132 S-nail (\*(UA) will wrap up into \%S-mailx in v15.0 (circa 2018).
133 Backward incompatibility has to be expected \(en
136 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
137 rules, for example, and shell metacharacters will become meaningful.
138 New and old behaviour is flagged \*(IN and \*(OU, and setting
141 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ,
142 will choose new behaviour when applicable.
143 \*(OB flags what will vanish, and enabling
147 enables obsoletion warnings.
151 \*(UA provides a simple and friendly environment for sending and
153 It is intended to provide the functionality of the POSIX
155 command, but is MIME capable and optionally offers extensions for
156 line editing, S/MIME, SMTP and POP3, among others.
157 \*(UA divides incoming mail into its constituent messages and allows
158 the user to deal with them in any order.
162 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
163 for manipulating messages and sending mail.
164 It provides the user simple editing capabilities to ease the composition
165 of outgoing messages, and increasingly powerful and reliable
166 non-interactive scripting capabilities.
168 .\" .Ss "Options" {{{
171 .Bl -tag -width ".It Fl BaNg"
174 Explicitly control which of the
176 shall be loaded: if the letter
178 is (case-insensitively) part of the
182 is loaded, likewise the letter
184 controls loading of the user's personal
186 file, whereas the letters
190 explicitly forbid loading of any resource files.
191 This option should be used by scripts: to avoid environmental noise they
194 from any configuration files and create a script-local environment,
195 explicitly setting any of the desired
196 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
199 This option overrides
206 command for the given user email
208 after program startup is complete (all resource files are loaded, any
210 setting is being established; only
212 commands have not been evaluated yet).
213 Being a special incarnation of
215 macros for the purpose of bundling longer-lived settings, activating
216 such an email account also switches to the accounts
218 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
223 .It Fl a Ar file Ns Op Ar =input-charset Ns Op Ar #output-charset
226 to the message (for compose mode opportunities refer to
230 .Sx "Filename transformations"
233 will be performed, but shell word expansion is restricted to the tilde
237 not be accessible but contain a
239 character, then anything before the
241 will be used as the filename, anything thereafter as a character set
244 If an input character set is specified,
245 .Mx -ix "character set specification"
246 but no output character set, then the given input character set is fixed
247 as-is, and no conversion will be applied;
248 giving the special string hyphen-minus
250 will be treated as if
252 has been specified (the default).
253 If an output character set has also been given then the conversion will
254 be performed exactly as specified and on-the-fly, not considering the
255 file's type and content.
256 As an exception, if the output character set is specified as hyphen-minus
258 then the default conversion algorithm (see
259 .Sx "Character sets" )
260 is applied (therefore no conversion is performed on-the-fly,
262 will be MIME-classified and its contents will be inspected first).
263 It is an error to specify anything but
265 if no character set conversion is available
267 does not include the term
272 (\*(OB: \*(UA will always use line-buffered output, to gain
273 line-buffered input even in batch mode enable batch mode via
278 Send a blind carbon copy to
280 ess, if the setting of
283 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ,
285 The option may be used multiple times.
287 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" .
291 Send carbon copies to the given receiver, if so allowed by
293 May be used multiple times.
298 the internal variable
300 which enables debug messages and disables message delivery,
301 among others; effectively turns almost any operation into a dry-run.
307 and thus discard messages with an empty message part body.
308 This command line option is \*(OB.
312 Just check if mail is present (in the system
314 or the one specified via
316 if yes, return an exit status of zero, a non-zero value otherwise.
317 To restrict the set of mails to consider in this evaluation a message
318 specification can be added with the option
323 Save the message to send in a file named after the local part of the
324 first recipient's address (instead of in
329 Read in the contents of the user's
331 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
333 (or the specified file) for processing;
334 when \*(UA is quit, it writes undeleted messages back to this file
340 argument will undergo some special
341 .Sx "Filename transformations"
346 is not a argument to the flag
348 but is instead taken from the command line after option processing has
352 that starts with a hyphen-minus, prefix with a relative path, as in
353 .Ql ./-hyphenbox.mbox .
359 and exit; a configurable summary view is available via the
365 Show a short usage summary.
371 to ignore tty interrupt signals.
377 of all messages that match the given
381 .Sx "Specifying messages"
388 option has been given in addition no header summary is produced,
389 but \*(UA will instead indicate via its exit status whether
395 note that any verbose output is suppressed in this mode and must instead
396 be enabled explicitly (e.g., by using the option
401 Special send mode that will flag standard input with the MIME
405 and use it as the main message body.
406 \*(ID Using this option will bypass processing of
407 .Va message-inject-head ,
410 .Va message-inject-tail .
416 Special send mode that will MIME classify the specified
418 and use it as the main message body.
419 \*(ID Using this option will bypass processing of
420 .Va message-inject-head ,
423 .Va message-inject-tail .
429 inhibit the initial display of message headers when reading mail or
430 editing a mail folder by calling
432 for the internal variable
437 Standard flag that inhibits reading the system wide
442 allows more control over the startup sequence; also see
443 .Sx "Resource files" .
447 Special send mode that will initialize the message body with the
448 contents of the specified
450 which may be standard input
452 only in non-interactive context.
458 Any folder opened will be in read-only mode.
462 .It Fl r Ar from-addr
463 The source address that appears in the
466 header of a message (or in the
469 header if the former contains multiple addresses) is not used for
470 relaying and delegating a message over the wire via SMTP, but instead an
471 envelope will enwrap the message content and provide the necessary
472 information (i.e., the RFC 5321 reverse-path, also used to report, e.g.,
473 delivery errors) to transmit the message to its destination(s).
474 Whereas said headers and internal variables will be used by \*(UA to
475 create the envelope if the builtin SMTP
477 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) is used, a file-based MTA will instead use the
478 identity of the message-originating user.
480 This command line option can be used to specify the reverse-path, to be
481 passed to a file-based
483 when a message is sent, via
484 .Ql -f Ar from-addr .
487 include a user name, then the address components will be separated and
488 the name part will be passed to a file-based
494 is also assigned to the internal variable
496 Many default installations and sites disallow explicit overriding of the
497 user identity which could be adjusted by this option, unless either
499 has been configured accordingly, or the user is member of a group with
500 special privileges, respectively.
502 If an empty string is passed as
504 then the content of the variable
506 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
508 will be evaluated and used for this purpose whenever the file-based
511 Note that \*(UA by default, without
513 that is, neither passes
517 command line options to a file-based MTA by itself, unless this
518 automatic deduction is enforced by
520 ing the internal variable
521 .Va r-option-implicit .
525 .It Fl S Ar var Ns Op = Ns value
529 iable and, in case of a non-boolean variable which has a value, assign
533 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
537 may be overwritten from within resource files,
538 the command line setting will be reestablished after all resource files
539 have been loaded in the order they have been given on the command line.
543 Specify the subject of the message to be sent.
544 Newline (NL) and carriage-return (CR) bytes are invalid and will be
545 normalized to space (SP) characters.
549 The message given (on standard input) is expected to contain, separated
550 from the message body by an empty line, a message header with
555 fields giving its recipients, which will be added to any recipients
556 specified on the command line.
557 If a message subject is specified via
559 then it will be used in favour of one given on the command line.
575 .Ql Mail-Followup-To: ,
576 by default created automatically dependent on message context, will
577 be used if specified (a special address massage will however still occur
579 Any other custom header field (also see
582 is passed through entirely
583 unchanged, and in conjunction with the option
585 it is possible to embed
586 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
594 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
597 appropriate privileges presumed; effectively identical to
607 will also show the list of
609 .Ql $ \*(uA -Xversion -Xx .
614 ting the internal variable
616 enables display of some informational context messages.
617 Using it twice increases the level of verbosity.
621 Add the given (or multiple for a multiline argument)
623 to the list of commands to be executed,
624 as a last step of program startup, before normal operation starts.
625 This is the only possibility to execute commands in non-interactive mode
626 when reading startup files is actively prohibited.
627 The commands will be evaluated as a unit, just as via
637 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
638 in compose mode even in non-interactive use cases.
639 This can be used to, e.g., automatically format the composed message
640 text before sending the message:
641 .Bd -literal -offset indent
642 $ ( echo 'line one. Word. Word2.';\e
643 echo '~| /usr/bin/fmt -tuw66' ) |\e
644 LC_ALL=C \*(uA -d~:/ -Sttycharset=utf-8 bob@exam.ple
649 Enables batch mode: standard input is made line buffered, the complete
650 set of (interactive) commands is available, processing of
651 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
652 is enabled in compose mode, and diverse
653 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
654 are adjusted for batch necessities, exactly as if done via
670 The following prepares an email message in a batched dry run:
671 .Bd -literal -offset indent
672 $ LC_ALL=C printf 'm bob\en~s ubject\enText\en~.\enx\en' |\e
673 LC_ALL=C \*(uA -d#:/ -X'alias bob bob@exam.ple'
678 This flag forces termination of option processing in order to prevent
681 It also forcefully puts \*(UA into send mode, see
682 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" .
690 argument, as well as all receivers established by the command line options
694 are subject to checks established via
697 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" .
699 .Op Ar mta-option ...
701 arguments that are given at the end of the command line after a
703 separator will be passed through to a file-based
705 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) and persist for an entire (interactive) session
706 \(en if the setting of the internal variable
708 allows their recognition; no such constraints apply to the variable
712 .\" .Ss "A starter" {{{
715 \*(UA is a direct descendant of
717 Mail, a successor of the Research
720 .Dq was there from the start
723 It thus represents the user side of the
725 mail system, whereas the system side (Mail-Transfer-Agent, MTA) was
726 traditionally taken by
728 and most MTAs provide a binary of this name for compatibility purposes.
733 of \*(UA then the system side is not a mandatory precondition for mail
737 Because \*(UA strives for compliance with POSIX
739 it is likely that some configuration settings have to be adjusted before
740 using it is a smooth experience.
743 resource file bends those standard imposed settings of the
744 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
745 a bit towards more user friendliness and safety, however, e.g., it
750 in order to suppress the automatic moving of messages to the
752 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
754 that would otherwise occur (see
755 .Sx "Message states" ) ,
758 to not remove empty system (MBOX) mailbox files in order not to mangle
759 file permissions when files eventually get recreated \(en
760 \*(UA will remove all empty (MBOX) mailbox files unless this variable is
763 mode has been enabled.
764 The file mode creation mask is explicitly managed via
770 in order to synchronize \*(UA with the exit status report of the used
775 to enter interactive startup even if the initial mailbox is empty,
777 to allow editing of headers as well as
779 to not strip down addresses in compose mode, and
781 to include the message that is being responded to when
786 contains some more complete configuration examples.
789 .\" .Ss "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" {{{
790 .Ss "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode"
792 To send a message to one or more people, using a local or a builtin
794 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) transport to actually deliver the generated mail
795 message, \*(UA can be invoked with arguments which are the names of
796 people to whom the mail will be sent, and the command line options
800 can be used to add (blind) carbon copy receivers:
802 .Bd -literal -offset indent
804 $ \*(uA -s ubject -a ttach.txt bill@exam.ple
806 # But... try it in an isolated dry-run mode (-d) first
807 $ LC_ALL=C \*(uA -d -:/ -Ssendwait \e
808 -b bcc@exam.ple -c cc@exam.ple \e
809 -. '(Lovely) Bob <bob@exam.ple>' eric@exam.ple
812 $ LC_ALL=C \*(uA -d -:/ -Sv15-compat -Ssendwait \e
813 -S mta=smtps://mylogin@exam.ple:465 -Ssmtp-auth=none \e
814 -S from=scriptreply@exam.ple \e
820 If standard input is a terminal rather than the message to be sent,
821 the user is expected to type in the message contents.
822 In this compose mode \*(UA treats lines beginning with the character
824 special \(en these are so-called
825 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" ,
826 which can be used to read in files, process shell commands, add and edit
827 attachments and more; e.g., the command escape
829 will start the text editor to revise the message in its current state,
831 allows editing of the most important message headers, with
833 custom headers can be created (more specifically than with
836 gives an overview of most other available command escapes.
840 at the beginning of an empty line leaves compose mode and causes the
841 message to be sent, whereas typing
844 twice will abort the current letter (saving its contents in the file
855 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
856 can be used to alter default behavior.
857 E.g., messages are sent asynchronously, without supervision, unless the
860 is set, therefore send errors will not be recognizable until then.
865 will automatically startup a text editor when compose mode is entered,
867 allows editing of headers additionally to plain body content, whereas
871 will cause the user to be prompted actively for (blind) carbon-copy
872 recipients, respectively, if the given list is empty.
877 .Va on-compose-cleanup )
878 hook variables may be set to
880 d macros to automatically adjust some settings dependent
881 on receiver, sender or subject contexts, and via the
882 .Va on-compose-splice
884 .Va on-compose-splice-shell
885 variables, the former also to be set to a
887 d macro, increasingly powerful mechanisms to perform automated message
888 adjustments are available.
891 Especially for using public mail provider accounts with the SMTP
893 it is often necessary to set
897 (even finer control via
898 .Va smtp-hostname ) ,
899 which (even if empty) also causes creation of
905 is set; saving a copy of sent messages in a
907 mailbox may be desirable \(en as for most mailbox
909 targets the value will undergo
910 .Sx "Filename transformations" .
913 for the purpose of arranging a complete environment of settings that can
914 be switched to with a single command or command line option may be
917 contains example configurations for sending messages via some of the
918 well-known public mail providers and also gives a compact overview on
919 how to setup a secure SSL/TLS environment).
924 sandbox dry-run tests first will prove correctness.
928 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup"
929 will spread light on the different ways of how to specify user email
930 account credentials, the
932 variable chains, and accessing protocol-specific resources,
935 goes into the details of character encodings, and how to use them for
936 interpreting the input data given in
938 and representing messages and MIME part contents in
940 and reading the section
941 .Sx "The mime.types files"
942 should help to understand how the MIME-type of outgoing attachments are
943 classified, and what can be done for fine-tuning.
944 Over the wire an intermediate, configurable
945 .Pf content-transfer-\: Va encoding
946 may be applied to the raw message part data.
949 Message recipients (as specified on the command line or defined in
954 may not only be email addressees but can also be names of mailboxes and
955 even complete shell command pipe specifications.
958 is not set then only network addresses (see
960 for a description of mail addresses) and plain user names (including MTA
961 aliases) may be used, other types will be filtered out, giving a warning
965 can be used to generate standard compliant network addresses.
967 .\" When changing any of the following adjust any RECIPIENTADDRSPEC;
968 .\" grep the latter for the complete picture
972 is set then extended recipient addresses will optionally be accepted:
973 Any name which starts with a vertical bar
975 character specifies a command pipe \(en the command string following the
977 is executed and the message is sent to its standard input;
978 Likewise, any name that starts with the character solidus
980 or the character sequence dot solidus
982 is treated as a file, regardless of the remaining content;
983 likewise a name that solely consists of a hyphen-minus
985 Any other name which contains a commercial at
987 character is treated as a network address;
988 Any other name which starts with a plus sign
990 character specifies a mailbox name;
991 Any other name which contains a solidus
993 character but no exclamation mark
997 character before also specifies a mailbox name;
998 What remains is treated as a network address.
1000 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1001 $ echo bla | \*(uA -Sexpandaddr -s test ./mbox.mbox
1002 $ echo bla | \*(uA -Sexpandaddr -s test '|cat >> ./mbox.mbox'
1003 $ echo safe | LC_ALL=C \e
1004 \*(uA -:/ -Sv15-compat -Ssendwait \e
1005 -Sexpandaddr=fail,-all,+addr,failinvaddr -s test \e
1010 It is possible to create personal distribution lists via the
1012 command, so that, for instance, the user can send mail to
1014 and have it go to a group of people.
1015 These aliases have nothing in common with the system wide aliases that
1016 may be used by the MTA, which are subject to the
1020 and are often tracked in a file
1026 Personal aliases will be expanded by \*(UA before the message is sent,
1027 and are thus a convenient alternative to specifying each addressee by
1028 itself; they correlate with the active set of
1035 .Dl alias cohorts bill jkf mark kridle@ucbcory ~/mail/cohorts.mbox
1038 To avoid environmental noise scripts should
1040 \*(UA from any configuration files and create a script-local
1041 environment, ideally with the command line options
1043 to disable any configuration file in conjunction with repetitions of
1045 to specify variables:
1047 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1048 $ env LC_ALL=C \*(uA -:/ \e
1049 -Sv15-compat -Ssendwait -Sttycharset=utf-8 \e
1050 -Sexpandaddr=fail,-all,failinvaddr \e
1051 -S mta=smtps://mylogin@exam.ple:465 -Ssmtp-auth=login \e
1052 -S from=scriptreply@exam.ple \e
1053 -s 'Subject to go' -a attachment_file \e
1054 -. 'Recipient 1 <rec1@exam.ple>' rec2@exam.ple \e
1059 As shown, scripts can
1061 a locale environment, the above specifies the all-compatible 7-bit clean
1064 but will nonetheless take and send UTF-8 in the message text by using
1066 In interactive mode, which is introduced in the next section, messages
1067 can be sent by calling the
1069 command with a list of recipient addresses \(em the semantics are
1070 completely identical to non-interactive message sending:
1072 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1073 $ \*(uA -d -Squiet -Semptystart
1074 "/var/spool/mail/user": 0 messages
1075 ? mail "Recipient 1 <rec1@exam.ple>", rec2@exam.ple
1076 ? # Will do the right thing (tm)
1077 ? m rec1@exam.ple rec2@exam.ple
1081 .\" .Ss "On reading mail, and interactive mode" {{{
1082 .Ss "On reading mail, and interactive mode"
1084 When invoked without addressees \*(UA enters interactive mode in which
1086 When used like that the user's system
1090 for an in-depth description of the different mailbox types that exist)
1091 is read in and a one line header of each message therein is displayed.
1092 The visual style of this summary of
1094 can be adjusted through the variable
1096 and the possible sorting criterion via
1102 can be performed with the command
1104 If the initially opened mailbox is empty \*(UA will instead exit
1105 immediately (after displaying a message) unless the variable
1114 will give a listing of all available commands and
1116 will give a summary of some common ones.
1117 If the \*(OPal documentation strings are available one can type
1120 and see the actual expansion of
1122 and what its purpose is, i.e., commands can be abbreviated
1123 (note that POSIX defines some abbreviations, so that the alphabetical
1124 order of commands does not necessarily relate to the abbreviations; it is
1125 however possible to define overwrites with
1126 .Ic commandalias ) .
1127 These commands can also produce a more
1132 Messages are given numbers (starting at 1) which uniquely identify
1133 messages; the current message \(en the
1135 \(en will either be the first new message, or the first unread message,
1136 or the first message of the mailbox; the internal variable
1138 will instead cause usage of the last message for this purpose.
1143 ful of header summaries containing the
1147 will display only the summaries of the given messages, defaulting to the
1151 Message content can be displayed with the command
1158 controls whether and when \*(UA will use the configured
1160 for display instead of directly writing to the user terminal
1162 the sole difference to the command
1164 which will always use the
1168 will instead only show the first
1170 of a message (maybe even compressed if
1173 Message display experience may improve by setting and adjusting
1174 .Va mime-counter-evidence ,
1176 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" .
1179 By default the current message
1181 is displayed, but like with many other commands it is possible to give
1182 a fancy message specification (see
1183 .Sx "Specifying messages" ) ,
1186 will display all unread messages,
1191 will type the messages 1 and 5,
1193 will type the messages 1 through 5, and
1197 will display the last and the next message, respectively.
1200 (a more substantial alias for
1202 will display a header summary of the given message specification list
1203 instead of their content, e.g., the following will search for subjects:
1206 .Dl from "'@Some subject to search for'"
1209 In the default setup all header fields of a message will be
1211 d, but fields can be white- or blacklisted for a variety of
1212 applications by using the command
1214 e.g., to restrict display to a very restricted set:
1215 .Ql Ic \:headerpick Cd \:type retain Ar \:from to cc subject .
1216 In order to display all header fields of a message regardless of
1217 currently active ignore or retain lists, use the commands
1222 will show the raw message content.
1223 Note that historically the global
1225 not only adjusts the list of displayed headers, but also sets
1229 Dependent upon the configuration a line editor (see the section
1230 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
1231 aims at making user experience with the many
1234 When reading the system
1240 specified a mailbox explicitly prefixed with the special
1242 modifier (propagating the mailbox to a
1244 .Sx "primary system mailbox" ) ,
1245 then messages which have been read will be moved to a
1247 .Sx "secondary mailbox" ,
1250 file, automatically when the mailbox is left, either by changing the
1251 active mailbox or by quitting \*(UA (also see
1252 .Sx "Message states" )
1253 \(en this automatic moving from a system or primary to the secondary
1254 mailbox is not performed when the variable
1257 Messages can also be explicitly
1259 d to other mailboxes, whereas
1261 keeps the original message.
1263 can be used to write out data content of specific parts of messages.
1266 After examining a message the user can
1268 to the sender and all recipients (which will also be placed in
1271 .Va recipients-in-cc
1274 exclusively to the sender(s).
1277 ed (shorter alias is
1279 When replying to or forwarding a message recipient addresses will be
1280 stripped from comments and names unless the internal variable
1287 messages: the former will add a series of
1289 headers, whereas the latter will not; different to newly created
1290 messages these will not save even with
1292 unless the additional variable
1295 Of course messages can also be
1297 but can spring into existence again via
1299 or when the \*(UA session is ended via the
1304 To end a mail processing session one may either issue
1306 to cause a full program exit, which possibly includes
1307 automatic moving of read messages to the
1309 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
1311 as well as updating the \*(OPal line editor
1315 instead in order to prevent any of these actions.
1318 .\" .Ss "HTML mail and MIME attachments" {{{
1319 .Ss "HTML mail and MIME attachments"
1321 Messages which are HTML-only become more and more common and of course
1322 many messages come bundled with a bouquet of MIME (Multipurpose Internet
1323 Mail Extensions) parts for, e.g., attachments.
1324 To get a notion of MIME types, \*(UA will first read
1325 .Sx "The mime.types files"
1326 (as configured and allowed by
1327 .Va mimetypes-load-control ) ,
1328 and then add onto that types registered directly with
1330 It (normally) has a default set of types builtin, too.
1331 To improve interaction with faulty MIME part declarations which are
1332 often seen in real-life messages, setting
1333 .Va mime-counter-evidence
1334 will allow \*(UA to verify the given assertion and possibly provide
1335 an alternative MIME type.
1338 Whereas \*(UA \*(OPally supports a simple HTML-to-text converter for
1339 HTML messages, it cannot handle MIME types other than plain text itself.
1340 Instead programs need to become registered to deal with specific MIME
1341 types or file extensions.
1342 These programs may either prepare plain text versions of their input in
1343 order to enable \*(UA to integrate their output neatlessly in its own
1344 message visualization (a mode which is called
1345 .Cd copiousoutput ) ,
1346 or display the content themselves, for example in an external graphical
1347 window: such handlers will only be considered by and for the command
1351 To install a handler program for a specific MIME type an according
1352 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE
1353 variable needs to be set; to instead define a handler for a specific
1354 file extension the respective
1356 variable can be used \(en these handlers take precedence.
1357 \*(OPally \*(UA supports mail user agent configuration as defined in
1358 RFC 1524; this mechanism (see
1359 .Sx "The Mailcap files" )
1360 will be queried for display or quote handlers if none of the former two
1361 .\" TODO v15-compat "will be" -> "is"
1362 did; it will be the sole source for handlers of other purpose.
1363 A last source for handlers is the MIME type definition itself, when
1364 a (\*(UA specific) type-marker was registered with the command
1366 (which many builtin MIME types do).
1369 E.g., to display a HTML message inline (that is, converted to a more
1370 fancy plain text representation than the builtin converter is capable to
1371 produce) with either of the text-mode browsers
1375 teach \*(UA about MathML documents and make it display them as plain
1376 text, and to open PDF attachments in an external PDF viewer,
1377 asynchronously and with some other magic attached:
1379 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1380 if [ "$features" !@ +filter-html-tagsoup ]
1381 #set pipe-text/html='@* elinks -force-html -dump 1'
1382 set pipe-text/html='@* lynx -stdin -dump -force_html'
1383 # Display HTML as plain text instead
1384 #set pipe-text/html=@
1386 mimetype @ application/mathml+xml mathml
1387 wysh set pipe-application/pdf='@&=@ \e
1388 trap "rm -f \e"${MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}\e"" EXIT;\e
1389 trap "trap \e"\e" INT QUIT TERM; exit 1" INT QUIT TERM;\e
1390 mupdf "${MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}"'
1394 .\" .Ss "Mailing lists" {{{
1397 \*(UA offers some support to ease handling of mailing lists.
1400 promotes all given arguments to known mailing lists, and
1402 sets their subscription attribute, creating them first as necessary.
1407 automatically, but only resets the subscription attribute.)
1408 Using the commands without arguments will show (a subset of) all
1409 currently defined mailing lists.
1414 can be used to mark out messages with configured list addresses
1415 in the header display.
1418 \*(OPally mailing lists may also be specified as (extended) regular
1419 expressions, which allows matching of many addresses with a single
1421 However, all fully qualified list addresses are matched via a fast
1422 dictionary, whereas expressions are placed in (a) list(s) which is
1423 (are) matched sequentially.
1425 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1426 set followup-to followup-to-honour=ask-yes reply-to-honour=ask-yes
1427 wysh mlist a1@b1.c1 a2@b2.c2 '.*@lists\e.c3$'
1428 mlsubscribe a4@b4.c4 exact@lists.c3
1433 .Va followup-to-honour
1435 .Ql Mail-\:Followup-\:To:
1436 header is honoured when the message is being replied to (via
1442 controls whether this header is created when sending mails; it will be
1443 created automatically for a couple of reasons, too, like when the
1445 .Dq mailing list specific
1450 is used to respond to a message with its
1451 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
1455 A difference in between the handling of known and subscribed lists is
1456 that the address of the sender is usually not part of a generated
1457 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
1458 when addressing the latter, whereas it is for the former kind of lists.
1459 Usually because there are exceptions: say, if multiple lists are
1460 addressed and not all of them are subscribed lists.
1462 For convenience \*(UA will, temporarily, automatically add a list
1463 address that is presented in the
1465 header of a message that is being responded to to the list of known
1467 Shall that header have existed \*(UA will instead, dependent on the
1469 .Va reply-to-honour ,
1472 for this purpose in order to accept a list administrators' wish that
1473 is supposed to have been manifested like that (but only if it provides
1474 a single address which resides on the same domain as what is stated in
1478 .\" .Ss "Resource files" {{{
1479 .Ss "Resource files"
1481 Upon startup \*(UA reads in several resource files:
1483 .Bl -tag -width ".It Pa BaNg"
1486 System wide initialization file.
1487 Reading of this file can be suppressed, either by using the
1489 (and according argument) or
1491 command line options, or by setting the
1494 .Ev MAILX_NO_SYSTEM_RC .
1498 File giving initial commands.
1499 A different file can be chosen by setting the
1503 Reading of this file can be suppressed with the
1505 command line option.
1507 .It Va mailx-extra-rc
1508 Can be used to define an optional startup file to be read after all
1509 other resource files.
1510 It can be used to specify settings that are not understood by other
1512 implementations, for example.
1513 This variable is only honoured when defined in a resource file, e.g.,
1515 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" .
1519 The content of these files is interpreted as follows:
1522 .Bl -bullet -compact
1524 The whitespace characters space, tabulator and newline,
1525 as well as those defined by the variable
1527 are removed from the beginning and end of input lines.
1529 Empty lines are ignored.
1531 Any other line is interpreted as a command.
1532 It may be spread over multiple input lines if the newline character is
1534 by placing a reverse solidus character
1536 as the last character of the line; whereas any leading whitespace of
1537 follow lines is ignored, trailing whitespace before a escaped newline
1538 remains in the input.
1540 If the line (content) starts with the number sign
1542 then it is a comment-command \(en a real command! \(en and also ignored.
1543 This command is the only form of comment that is understood.
1547 Unless \*(UA is about to enter interactive mode syntax errors that occur
1548 while loading these files are treated as errors and cause program exit.
1549 More files with syntactically equal content can be
1551 The following, saved in a file, would be an examplary content:
1553 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1554 # This line is a comment command. And y\e
1555 es, it is really continued here.
1562 .\" .Ss "Character sets" {{{
1563 .Ss "Character sets"
1565 \*(OP \*(UA detects the character set of the terminal by using
1566 mechanisms that are controlled by the
1571 should give an overview): the \*(UA internal variable
1573 will be set to the detected terminal character set accordingly,
1574 and will thus show up in the output of the commands
1580 However, a user supplied
1582 value is not overwritten by this detection mechanism.
1583 I.e., it is actually possible to send mail in a completely
1585 locale environment, an option which can be used to generate and send,
1586 e.g., UTF-8 input data in a
1588 environment (an example of this can be found in the section
1589 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" ) .
1590 Changing the value does not mean much beside that, because several
1591 aspects of the real character set are implied by the locale environment
1592 of the system, which stays unaffected by
1596 If no character set conversion capabilities have been compiled into
1599 does not include the term
1603 will be the only supported character set,
1604 it is simply assumed that it can be used to exchange 8-bit messages
1605 (over the wire an intermediate
1606 .Pf content-transfer-\: Va encoding
1608 and the rest of this section does not apply;
1609 it may however still be necessary to explicitly set it if automatic
1610 detection fails, since in that case it defaults to the mentioned
1611 .\" (Keep in SYNC: ./nail.1:"Character sets", ./config.h:CHARSET_*!)
1615 When reading messages, their text is converted into
1617 as necessary in order to display them on the users terminal.
1618 Unprintable characters and invalid byte sequences are detected
1619 and replaced by proper substitution characters.
1620 Character set mappings for source character sets can be established with
1623 which may be handy to work around faulty character set catalogues (e.g.,
1624 to add a missing LATIN1 to ISO-8859-1 mapping), or to enforce treatment
1625 of one character set as another one (e.g., to interpret LATIN1 as CP1252).
1627 .Va charset-unknown-8bit
1628 to deal with another hairy aspect of message interpretation.
1631 When sending messages all their parts and attachments are classified.
1632 Whereas no character set conversion is performed on those parts which
1633 appear to be binary data,
1634 the character set being used must be declared within the MIME header of
1635 an outgoing text part if it contains characters that do not conform to
1636 the set of characters that are allowed by the email standards.
1637 Permissible values for character sets can be declared using the
1641 which defines a catch-all last-resort fallback character set that is
1642 implicitly appended to the list of character sets in
1646 When replying to a message and the variable
1647 .Va reply-in-same-charset
1648 is set then the character set of the message being replied to is tried
1649 first (after mapping via
1650 .Ic charsetalias ) .
1651 And it is also possible to make \*(UA work even more closely related to
1652 the current locale setting automatically by using the variable
1653 .Va sendcharsets-else-ttycharset ,
1654 please see there for more information.
1657 All the specified character sets are tried in order unless the
1658 conversion of the part or attachment succeeds.
1659 If none of the tried (8-bit) character sets is capable to represent the
1660 content of the part or attachment,
1661 then the message will not be sent and its text will optionally be
1665 In general, if the message
1666 .Dq Cannot convert from a to b
1667 appears, either some characters are not appropriate for the currently
1668 selected (terminal) character set,
1669 or the needed conversion is not supported by the system.
1670 In the first case, it is necessary to set an appropriate
1672 locale and/or the variable
1676 The best results are usually achieved when \*(UA is run in a UTF-8
1677 locale on a UTF-8 capable terminal, in which case the full Unicode
1678 spectrum of characters is available.
1679 In this setup characters from various countries can be displayed,
1680 while it is still possible to use more simple character sets for sending
1681 to retain maximum compatibility with older mail clients.
1684 On the other hand the POSIX standard defines a locale-independent 7-bit
1685 .Dq portable character set
1686 that should be used when overall portability is an issue, the even more
1687 restricted subset named
1688 .Dq portable filename character set
1689 consisting of A-Z, a-z, 0-9, period
1697 .\" .Ss "Message states" {{{
1698 .Ss "Message states"
1700 \*(UA differentiates in between several different message states;
1701 the current state will be reflected in header summary displays if
1703 is configured to do so (via the internal variable
1705 and messages can also be selected and be acted upon depending on their
1707 .Sx "Specifying messages" ) .
1708 When operating on the system
1712 .Sx "primary system mailbox" ,
1713 special actions, like the automatic moving of messages to the
1715 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
1717 may be applied when the mailbox is left (also implicitly via
1718 a successful exit of \*(UA, but not if the special command
1720 is used) \(en however, because this may be irritating to users which
1723 mail-user-agents, the default global
1729 variables in order to suppress this behaviour.
1731 .Bl -hang -width ".It Ql new"
1733 Message has neither been viewed nor moved to any other state.
1734 Such messages are retained even in the
1736 .Sx "primary system mailbox" .
1739 Message has neither been viewed nor moved to any other state, but the
1740 message was present already when the mailbox has been opened last:
1741 Such messages are retained even in the
1743 .Sx "primary system mailbox" .
1746 The message has been processed by one of the following commands:
1765 will always try to automatically
1771 logical message, and may thus mark multiple messages as read, the
1773 command will do so if the internal variable
1778 command is used, messages that are in a
1780 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
1783 state when the mailbox is left will be saved in the
1785 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
1787 unless the internal variable
1792 The message has been processed by one of the following commands:
1798 can be used to access such messages.
1801 The message has been processed by a
1803 command and it will be retained in its current location.
1806 The message has been processed by one of the following commands:
1812 command is used, messages that are in a
1814 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
1817 state when the mailbox is left will be deleted; they will be saved in the
1819 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
1821 when the internal variable
1827 In addition to these message states, flags which otherwise have no
1828 technical meaning in the mail system except allowing special ways of
1829 addressing them when
1830 .Sx "Specifying messages"
1831 can be set on messages.
1832 These flags are saved with messages and are thus persistent, and are
1833 portable between a set of widely used MUAs.
1835 .Bl -hang -width ".It Ic answered"
1837 Mark messages as having been answered.
1839 Mark messages as being a draft.
1841 Mark messages which need special attention.
1845 .\" .Ss "Specifying messages" {{{
1846 .Ss "Specifying messages"
1853 can be given a list of message numbers as arguments to apply to a number
1854 of messages at once.
1857 deletes messages 1 and 2,
1860 will delete the messages 1 through 5.
1861 In sorted or threaded mode (see the
1865 will delete the messages that are located between (and including)
1866 messages 1 through 5 in the sorted/threaded order, as shown in the
1869 The following special message names exist:
1872 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ar BaNg"
1874 The current message, the so-called
1878 The message that was previously the current message.
1881 The parent message of the current message,
1882 that is the message with the Message-ID given in the
1884 field or the last entry of the
1886 field of the current message.
1889 The next previous undeleted message,
1890 or the next previous deleted message for the
1893 In sorted/threaded mode,
1894 the next previous such message in the sorted/threaded order.
1897 The next undeleted message,
1898 or the next deleted message for the
1901 In sorted/threaded mode,
1902 the next such message in the sorted/threaded order.
1905 The first undeleted message,
1906 or the first deleted message for the
1909 In sorted/threaded mode,
1910 the first such message in the sorted/threaded order.
1914 In sorted/threaded mode,
1915 the last message in the sorted/threaded order.
1919 selects the message addressed with
1923 is any other message specification,
1924 and all messages from the thread that begins at it.
1925 Otherwise it is identical to
1930 the thread beginning with the current message is selected.
1935 All messages that were included in the
1936 .Sx "Message list arguments"
1937 of the previous command.
1940 An inclusive range of message numbers.
1941 Selectors that may also be used as endpoints include any of
1946 .Dq any substring matches
1949 header, which will match addresses (too) even if
1951 is set (and POSIX says
1952 .Dq any address as shown in a header summary shall be matchable in this form ) ;
1955 variable is set, only the local part of the address is evaluated
1956 for the comparison, not ignoring case, and the setting of
1958 is completely ignored.
1959 For finer control and match boundaries use the
1963 .It Ar / Ns Ar string
1964 All messages that contain
1966 in the subject field (case ignored).
1973 the string from the previous specification of that type is used again.
1975 .It Xo Op Ar @ Ns Ar name-list Ns
1978 All messages that contain the given case-insensitive search
1980 ession; if the \*(OPal regular expression (see
1982 support is available
1984 will be interpreted as (an extended) one if any of the
1986 (extended) regular expression characters is seen: in this case this
1987 should match strings correctly which are in the locale
1991 .Ar @ Ns Ar name-list
1992 part is missing, the search is restricted to the subject field body,
1995 specifies a comma-separated list of header fields to search, as in
1997 .Dl '@to,from,cc@Someone i ought to know'
1999 In order to search for a string that includes a
2001 (commercial at) character the
2003 is effectively non-optional, but may be given as the empty string.
2004 Some special header fields may be abbreviated:
2018 respectively and case-insensitively.
2023 can be used to search in (all of) the header(s) of the message, and the
2032 can be used to perform full text searches \(en whereas the former
2033 searches only the body, the latter also searches the message header.
2035 This message specification performs full text comparison, but even with
2036 regular expression support it is almost impossible to write a search
2037 expression that savely matches only a specific address domain.
2038 To request that the content of the header is treated as a list of
2039 addresses, and to strip those down to the plain email address which the
2040 search expression is to be matched against, prefix the header name
2041 (abbreviation) with a tilde
2044 .Dl @~f@@a\e.safe\e.domain\e.match$
2047 All messages of state
2051 is one or multiple of the following colon modifiers:
2053 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ar :M"
2058 Old messages (any not in state
2080 messages (cf. the variable
2081 .Va markanswered ) .
2086 \*(OP Messages classified as spam (see
2087 .Sx "Handling spam" . )
2089 \*(OP Messages with unsure spam classification.
2095 \*(OP IMAP-style SEARCH expressions may also be used.
2096 This addressing mode is available with all types of folders;
2097 \*(UA will perform the search locally as necessary.
2098 Strings must be enclosed by double quotes
2100 in their entirety if they contain whitespace or parentheses;
2101 within the quotes, only reverse solidus
2103 is recognized as an escape character.
2104 All string searches are case-insensitive.
2105 When the description indicates that the
2107 representation of an address field is used,
2108 this means that the search string is checked against both a list
2111 .Bd -literal -offset indent
2112 (\*qname\*q \*qsource\*q \*qlocal-part\*q \*qdomain-part\*q)
2117 and the addresses without real names from the respective header field.
2118 These search expressions can be nested using parentheses, see below for
2122 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ar _n_u"
2123 .It Ar ( criterion )
2124 All messages that satisfy the given
2126 .It Ar ( criterion1 criterion2 ... criterionN )
2127 All messages that satisfy all of the given criteria.
2129 .It Ar ( or criterion1 criterion2 )
2130 All messages that satisfy either
2135 To connect more than two criteria using
2137 specifications have to be nested using additional parentheses,
2139 .Ql (or a (or b c)) ,
2143 .Ql ((a or b) and c) .
2146 operation of independent criteria on the lowest nesting level,
2147 it is possible to achieve similar effects by using three separate
2151 .It Ar ( not criterion )
2152 All messages that do not satisfy
2154 .It Ar ( bcc \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2155 All messages that contain
2157 in the envelope representation of the
2160 .It Ar ( cc \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2161 All messages that contain
2163 in the envelope representation of the
2166 .It Ar ( from \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2167 All messages that contain
2169 in the envelope representation of the
2172 .It Ar ( subject \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2173 All messages that contain
2178 .It Ar ( to \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2179 All messages that contain
2181 in the envelope representation of the
2184 .It Ar ( header name \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2185 All messages that contain
2190 .It Ar ( body \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2191 All messages that contain
2194 .It Ar ( text \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2195 All messages that contain
2197 in their header or body.
2198 .It Ar ( larger size )
2199 All messages that are larger than
2202 .It Ar ( smaller size )
2203 All messages that are smaller than
2207 .It Ar ( before date )
2208 All messages that were received before
2210 which must be in the form
2214 denotes the day of the month as one or two digits,
2216 is the name of the month \(en one of
2217 .Ql Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec ,
2220 is the year as four digits, e.g.,
2224 All messages that were received on the specified date.
2225 .It Ar ( since date )
2226 All messages that were received since the specified date.
2227 .It Ar ( sentbefore date )
2228 All messages that were sent on the specified date.
2229 .It Ar ( senton date )
2230 All messages that were sent on the specified date.
2231 .It Ar ( sentsince date )
2232 All messages that were sent since the specified date.
2234 The same criterion as for the previous search.
2235 This specification cannot be used as part of another criterion.
2236 If the previous command line contained more than one independent
2237 criterion then the last of those criteria is used.
2241 .\" .Ss "On URL syntax and credential lookup" {{{
2242 .Ss "On URL syntax and credential lookup"
2244 \*(IN For accessing protocol-specific resources usage of Uniform
2245 Resource Locators (URL, RFC 1738) has become omnipresent.
2246 \*(UA expects and understands URLs in the following form;
2249 denote optional parts, optional either because there also exist other
2250 ways to define the information in question or because support of the
2251 part is protocol-specific (e.g.,
2253 is used by the local maildir and the IMAP protocol, but not by POP3);
2258 are specified they must be given in URL percent encoded form (RFC 3986;
2264 .Dl PROTOCOL://[USER[:PASSWORD]@]server[:port][/path]
2267 Note that these \*(UA URLs most often do not conform to any real
2268 standard, but instead represent a normalized variant of RFC 1738 \(en
2269 they are not used in data exchange but only meant as a compact,
2270 easy-to-use way of defining and representing information in
2271 a well-known notation.
2274 Many internal variables of \*(UA exist in multiple versions, called
2275 variable chains for the rest of this document: the plain
2280 .Ql variable-USER@HOST .
2287 had been specified in the respective URL, otherwise it refers to the plain
2293 that had been found when doing the user chain lookup as is described
2296 will never be in URL percent encoded form, whether it came from an URL
2297 or not; i.e., variable chain name extensions of
2298 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
2299 must not be URL percent encoded.
2302 For example, whether an hypothetical URL
2303 .Ql smtp://hey%3Ayou@our.house
2304 had been given that includes a user, or whether the URL was
2305 .Ql smtp://our.house
2306 and the user had been found differently, to lookup the variable chain
2307 .Va smtp-use-starttls
2308 \*(UA first looks for whether
2309 .Ql smtp-\:use-\:starttls-\:hey:you@our.house
2310 is defined, then whether
2311 .Ql smtp-\:use-\:starttls-\:our.house
2312 exists before finally ending up looking at the plain variable itself.
2315 \*(UA obeys the following logic scheme when dealing with the
2316 necessary credential information of an account:
2322 has been given in the URL the variables
2326 are looked up; if no such variable(s) can be found then \*(UA will,
2327 when enforced by the \*(OPal variables
2328 .Va netrc-lookup-HOST
2335 specific entry which provides a
2337 name: this lookup will only succeed if unambiguous (one possible matching
2340 It is possible to load encrypted
2345 If there is still no
2347 then \*(UA will fall back to the user who is supposed to run \*(UA,
2348 the identity of which has been fixated during \*(UA startup and is
2349 known to be a valid user on the current host.
2352 Authentication: unless otherwise noted this will lookup the
2353 .Va PROTOCOL-auth-USER@HOST , PROTOCOL-auth-HOST , PROTOCOL-auth
2354 variable chain, falling back to a protocol-specific default should this
2360 has been given in the URL, then if the
2362 has been found through the \*(OPal
2364 that may have already provided the password, too.
2365 Otherwise the variable chain
2366 .Va password-USER@HOST , password-HOST , password
2367 is looked up and used if existent.
2369 Afterwards the complete \*(OPal variable chain
2370 .Va netrc-lookup-USER@HOST , netrc-lookup-HOST , netrc-lookup
2374 cache is searched for a password only (multiple user accounts for
2375 a single machine may exist as well as a fallback entry without user
2376 but with a password).
2378 If at that point there is still no password available, but the
2379 (protocols') chosen authentication type requires a password, then in
2380 interactive mode the user will be prompted on the terminal.
2385 S/MIME verification works relative to the values found in the
2389 header field(s), which means that the values of
2390 .Va smime-sign , smime-sign-cert , smime-sign-include-certs
2392 .Va smime-sign-message-digest
2393 will not be looked up using the
2397 chains from above but instead use the corresponding values from the
2398 message that is being worked on.
2399 In unusual cases multiple and different
2403 combinations may therefore be involved \(en on the other hand those
2404 unusual cases become possible.
2405 The usual case is as short as:
2408 .Dl set mta=smtp://USER:PASS@HOST smtp-use-starttls \e
2409 .Dl \ \ \ \ smime-sign smime-sign-cert=+smime.pair
2414 contains complete example configurations.
2417 .\" .Ss "On terminal control and line editor" {{{
2418 .Ss "On terminal control and line editor"
2420 \*(OP Terminal control will be realized through one of the standard
2422 libraries, either the
2424 or, alternatively, the
2426 both of which will be initialized to work with the environment variable
2428 Terminal control will enhance or enable interactive usage aspects, e.g.,
2429 .Sx "Coloured display" ,
2430 and extend behaviour of the Mailx-Line-Editor (MLE), which may learn the
2431 byte-sequences of keys like the cursor and function keys, and which will
2432 automatically enter the so-called
2434 alternative screen shall the terminal support it.
2435 The internal variable
2437 can be used to overwrite settings or to learn (correct(ed)) keycodes.
2438 Actual interaction with the chosen library can be disabled completely by
2439 setting the internal variable
2440 .Va termcap-disable ;
2442 will be queried regardless, even if the \*(OPal support for the
2443 libraries has not been enabled at configuration time.
2446 \*(OP The builtin \*(UA Mailx-Line-Editor (MLE) should work in all
2447 environments which comply to the ISO C standard
2449 and will support wide glyphs if possible (the necessary functionality
2450 had been removed from ISO C, but was included in
2452 Prevent usage of a line editor in interactive mode by setting the
2454 .Va line-editor-disable .
2455 Especially if the \*(OPal terminal control support is missing setting
2456 entries in the internal variable
2458 will help shall the MLE misbehave, see there for more.
2459 The MLE can support a little bit of
2465 feature is available then input from line editor prompts will be saved
2466 in a history list that can be searched in and be expanded from.
2467 Such saving can be prevented by prefixing input with any amount of
2469 Aspects of history, like allowed content and maximum size, as well as
2470 whether history shall be saved persistently, can be configured with the
2474 .Va history-gabby-persist
2479 The MLE supports a set of editing and control commands.
2480 By default (as) many (as possible) of these will be assigned to a set of
2481 single-letter control codes, which should work on any terminal (and can
2482 be generated by holding the
2484 key while pressing the key of desire, e.g.,
2488 command is available then the MLE commands can also be accessed freely
2489 by assigning the command name, which is shown in parenthesis in the list
2490 below, to any desired key-sequence, and the MLE will instead and also use
2492 to establish its builtin key bindings
2493 (more of them if the \*(OPal terminal control is available),
2494 an action which can then be suppressed completely by setting
2495 .Va line-editor-no-defaults .
2496 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
2497 notation is used in the following;
2498 combinations not mentioned either cause job control signals or do not
2499 generate a (unique) keycode:
2503 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql Ba"
2505 Go to the start of the line
2507 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-home ) .
2510 Move the cursor backward one character
2512 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-bwd ) .
2515 Forward delete the character under the cursor;
2516 quits \*(UA if used on the empty line unless the internal variable
2520 .Pf ( Cd mle-del-fwd ) .
2523 Go to the end of the line
2525 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-end ) .
2528 Move the cursor forward one character
2530 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-fwd ) .
2533 Cancel current operation, full reset.
2534 If there is an active history search or tabulator expansion then this
2535 command will first reset that, reverting to the former line content;
2536 thus a second reset is needed for a full reset in this case
2538 .Pf ( Cd mle-reset ) .
2541 Backspace: backward delete one character
2543 .Pf ( Cd mle-del-bwd ) .
2547 Horizontal tabulator:
2548 try to expand the word before the cursor, supporting the usual
2549 .Sx "Filename transformations"
2551 .Pf ( Cd mle-complete ) .
2553 .Cd mle-quote-rndtrip .
2557 commit the current line
2559 .Pf ( Cd mle-commit ) .
2562 Cut all characters from the cursor to the end of the line
2564 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-end ) .
2569 .Pf ( Cd mle-repaint ) .
2572 \*(OP Go to the next history entry
2574 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-fwd ) .
2577 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2581 \*(OP Go to the previous history entry
2583 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-bwd ) .
2586 Toggle roundtrip mode shell quotes, where produced,
2589 .Pf ( Cd mle-quote-rndtrip ) .
2590 This setting is temporary, and will be forgotten once the command line
2591 is committed; also see
2595 \*(OP Complete the current line from (the remaining) older history entries
2597 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-srch-bwd ) .
2600 \*(OP Complete the current line from (the remaining) newer history entries
2602 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-srch-fwd ) .
2605 Paste the snarf buffer
2607 .Pf ( Cd mle-paste ) .
2615 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-line ) .
2618 Prompts for a Unicode character (its hexadecimal number) to be inserted
2620 .Pf ( Cd mle-prompt-char ) .
2621 Note this command needs to be assigned to a single-letter control code
2622 in order to become recognized and executed during input of
2623 a key-sequence (only three single-letter control codes can be used for
2624 that shortcut purpose); this control code is special-treated and cannot
2625 be part of any other sequence, because any occurrence will perform the
2627 function immediately.
2630 Cut the characters from the one preceding the cursor to the preceding
2633 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-word-bwd ) .
2636 Move the cursor forward one word boundary
2638 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-word-fwd ) .
2641 Move the cursor backward one word boundary
2643 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-word-bwd ) .
2646 Escape: reset a possibly used multibyte character input state machine
2647 and \*(OPally a lingering, incomplete key binding
2649 .Pf ( Cd mle-cancel ) .
2650 This command needs to be assigned to a single-letter control code in
2651 order to become recognized and executed during input of a key-sequence
2652 (only three single-letter control codes can be used for that shortcut
2654 This control code may also be part of a multi-byte sequence, but if
2655 a sequence is active and the very control code is currently also an
2656 expected input, then it will first be consumed by the active sequence.
2659 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2663 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2667 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2671 Cut the characters from the one after the cursor to the succeeding word
2674 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-word-fwd ) .
2685 this will immediately reset a possibly active search etc.
2690 ring the audible bell.
2694 .\" .Ss "Coloured display" {{{
2695 .Ss "Coloured display"
2697 \*(OP \*(UA can be configured to support a coloured display and font
2698 attributes by emitting ANSI / ISO 6429 SGR (select graphic rendition)
2700 Usage of colours and font attributes solely depends upon the
2701 capability of the detected terminal type that is defined by the
2702 environment variable
2704 and which can be fine-tuned by the user via the internal variable
2708 On top of what \*(UA knows about the terminal the boolean variable
2710 defines whether the actually applicable colour and font attribute
2711 sequences should also be generated when output is going to be paged
2712 through the external program defined by the environment variable
2717 This is not enabled by default because different pager programs need
2718 different command line switches or other configuration in order to
2719 support those sequences.
2720 \*(UA however knows about some widely used pagers and in a clean
2721 environment it is often enough to simply set
2723 please refer to that variable for more on this topic.
2728 is set then any active usage of colour and font attribute sequences
2729 is suppressed, but without affecting possibly established
2734 To define and control colours and font attributes a single multiplexer
2735 command family exists:
2737 shows or defines colour mappings for the given colour type (e.g.,
2740 can be used to remove mappings of a given colour type.
2741 Since colours are only available in interactive mode, it may make
2742 sense to conditionalize the colour setup by encapsulating it with
2745 .Bd -literal -offset indent
2746 if terminal && $features =@ +colour
2747 colour iso view-msginfo ft=bold,fg=green
2748 colour iso view-header ft=bold,fg=red "from,subject"
2749 colour iso view-header fg=red
2751 uncolour iso view-header from,subject
2752 colour iso view-header ft=bold,fg=magenta,bg=cyan
2753 colour 256 view-header ft=bold,fg=208,bg=230 subject,from
2754 colour mono view-header ft=bold
2755 colour mono view-header ft=bold,ft=reverse subject,from
2759 .\" }}} (DESCRIPTION)
2762 .\" .Sh COMMANDS {{{
2765 Each command is typed on a line by itself,
2766 and may take arguments following the command word.
2767 An unquoted reverse solidus
2769 at the end of a command line
2771 the newline character: it is discarded and the next line of input is
2772 used as a follow-up line, with all leading whitespace removed;
2773 once the entire command line is completed, the processing that is
2774 documented in the following, after removal of the whitespace characters
2775 .Cm space , tabulator , newline
2776 as well as those defined by the variable
2778 from the beginning and end of the line, begins.
2781 Command names may be abbreviated, in which case the first command that
2782 matches the given prefix will be used.
2785 can be used to show the list of all commands, either alphabetically
2786 sorted or in prefix search order (these do not match, also because the
2787 POSIX standard prescribes a set of abbreviations).
2788 \*(OPally the command
2792 when given an argument, will show a documentation string for the
2793 command matching the expanded argument, as in
2795 which should be a shorthand of
2797 with these documentation strings both commands support a more
2799 listing mode which includes the argument type of the command and other
2800 information which applies; a handy suggestion might thus be:
2802 .Bd -literal -offset indent
2804 # Before v15: need to enable sh(1)ell-style on _entire_ line!
2805 localopts 1;wysh set verbose;ignerr eval "${@}";return ${?}
2807 ? commandalias xv '\ecall __xv'
2811 .\" .Ss "Command modifiers" {{{
2812 .Ss "Command modifiers"
2814 Commands may be prefixed by one or multiple command modifiers.
2818 The modifier reverse solidus
2821 to be placed first, prevents
2823 expansions on the remains of the line, e.g.,
2825 will always evaluate the command
2827 even if an (command)alias of the same name exists.
2829 content may itself contain further command modifiers, including
2830 an initial reverse solidus to prevent further expansions.
2836 indicates that any error generated by the following command should be
2837 ignored by the state machine and not cause a program exit with enabled
2839 or for the standardized exit cases in
2844 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ,
2845 will be set to the real exit status of the command regardless.
2848 Some commands support the
2851 modifier: if used, they expect the name of a variable, which can itself
2852 be a variable, i.e., shell expansion is applied, as their first
2853 argument, and will place their computation result in it instead of the
2854 default location (it is usually written to standard output).
2856 The given name will be tested for being a valid
2858 variable name, and may therefore only consist of upper- and lowercase
2859 characters, digits, and the underscore; the hyphen-minus may be used as
2860 a non-portable extension; digits may not be used as first, hyphen-minus
2861 may not be used as last characters.
2862 In addition the name may either not be one of the known
2863 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ,
2864 or must otherwise refer to a writable (non-boolean) value variable.
2865 The actual put operation may fail nonetheless, e.g., if the variable
2866 expects a number argument only a number will be accepted.
2867 Any error during these operations causes the command as such to fail,
2868 and the error number
2871 .Va ^ERR Ns -NOTSUP ,
2878 Last, but not least, the modifier
2881 can be used for some old and established commands to choose the new
2882 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
2883 rules over the traditional
2884 .Sx "Old-style argument quoting" .
2888 .\" .Ss "Message list arguments" {{{
2889 .Ss "Message list arguments"
2891 Some commands expect arguments that represent messages (actually
2892 their symbolic message numbers), as has been documented above under
2893 .Sx "Specifying messages"
2895 If no explicit message list has been specified, the next message
2896 forward that satisfies the command's requirements will be used,
2897 and if there are no messages forward of the current message,
2898 the search proceeds backwards;
2899 if there are no good messages at all to be found, an error message is
2900 shown and the command is aborted.
2903 .\" .Ss "Old-style argument quoting" {{{
2904 .Ss "Old-style argument quoting"
2906 \*(ID This section documents the old, traditional style of quoting
2907 non-message-list arguments to commands which expect this type of
2908 arguments: whereas still used by the majority of such commands, the new
2909 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
2910 may be available even for those via
2913 .Sx "Command modifiers" .
2914 Nonetheless care must be taken, because only new commands have been
2915 designed with all the capabilities of the new quoting rules in mind,
2916 which can, e.g., generate control characters.
2919 .Bl -bullet -offset indent
2921 An argument can be enclosed between paired double-quotes
2926 any whitespace, shell word expansion, or reverse solidus characters
2927 (except as described next) within the quotes are treated literally as
2928 part of the argument.
2929 A double-quote will be treated literally within single-quotes and vice
2931 Inside such a quoted string the actually used quote character can be
2932 used nonetheless by escaping it with a reverse solidus
2938 An argument that is not enclosed in quotes, as above, can usually still
2939 contain space characters if those spaces are reverse solidus escaped, as in
2943 A reverse solidus outside of the enclosing quotes is discarded
2944 and the following character is treated literally as part of the argument.
2948 .\" .Ss "Shell-style argument quoting" {{{
2949 .Ss "Shell-style argument quoting"
2951 Commands which don't expect message-list arguments use
2953 ell-style, and therefore POSIX standardized, argument parsing and
2955 \*(ID Most new commands only support these new rules and are flagged
2956 \*(NQ, some elder ones can use them with the command modifier
2958 in the future only this type of argument quoting will remain.
2961 A command line is parsed from left to right and an input token is
2962 completed whenever an unquoted, otherwise ignored, metacharacter is seen.
2963 Metacharacters are vertical bar
2969 as well as all characters from the variable
2972 .Cm space , tabulator , newline .
2973 The additional metacharacters left and right parenthesis
2975 and less-than and greater-than signs
2979 supports are not used, and are treated as ordinary characters: for one
2980 these characters are a vivid part of email addresses, and it seems
2981 highly unlikely that their function will become meaningful to \*(UA.
2983 .Bd -filled -offset indent
2984 .Sy Compatibility note:
2985 \*(ID Please note that many even new-style commands do not yet honour
2987 to parse their arguments: whereas the
2989 ell is a language with syntactic elements of clearly defined semantics,
2990 \*(UA parses entire input lines and decides on a per-command base what
2991 to do with the rest of the line.
2992 Often it even depends on subcommands how the rest of the line should be
2993 treated, and until v15 we are not capable to perform this deep
2994 inspection of arguments.
2995 Nonetheless, at least the following commands which work with positional
2996 parameters fully support
2998 for an almost shell-compatible field splitting:
2999 .Ic call , call_if , read , vpospar , xcall .
3003 Any unquoted number sign
3005 at the beginning of a new token starts a comment that extends to the end
3006 of the line, and therefore ends argument processing.
3007 An unquoted dollar sign
3009 will cause variable expansion of the given name, which must be a valid
3011 ell-style variable name (see
3013 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
3016 (shell) variables can be accessed through this mechanism, brace
3017 enclosing the name is supported (i.e., to subdivide a token).
3020 Whereas the metacharacters
3021 .Cm space , tabulator , newline
3022 only complete an input token, vertical bar
3028 also act as control operators and perform control functions.
3029 For now supported is semicolon
3031 which terminates a single command, therefore sequencing the command line
3032 and making the remainder of the line a subject to reevaluation.
3033 With sequencing, multiple command argument types and quoting rules may
3034 therefore apply to a single line, which can become problematic before
3035 v15: e.g., the first of the following will cause surprising results.
3038 .Dl ? echo one; set verbose; echo verbose=$verbose.
3039 .Dl ? echo one; wysh set verbose; echo verbose=$verbose.
3042 Quoting is a mechanism that will remove the special meaning of
3043 metacharacters and reserved words, and will prevent expansion.
3044 There are four quoting mechanisms: the escape character, single-quotes,
3045 double-quotes and dollar-single-quotes:
3048 .Bl -bullet -offset indent
3050 The literal value of any character can be preserved by preceding it
3051 with the escape character reverse solidus
3055 Arguments which are enclosed in
3056 .Ql 'single-\:quotes'
3057 retain their literal value.
3058 A single-quote cannot occur within single-quotes.
3061 The literal value of all characters enclosed in
3062 .Ql \(dqdouble-\:quotes\(dq
3063 is retained, with the exception of dollar sign
3065 which will cause variable expansion, as above, backquote (grave accent)
3067 (which not yet means anything special), reverse solidus
3069 which will escape any of the characters dollar sign
3071 (to prevent variable expansion), backquote (grave accent)
3075 (to prevent ending the quote) and reverse solidus
3077 (to prevent escaping, i.e., to embed a reverse solidus character as-is),
3078 but has no special meaning otherwise.
3081 Arguments enclosed in
3082 .Ql $'dollar-\:single-\:quotes'
3083 extend normal single quotes in that reverse solidus escape sequences are
3084 expanded as follows:
3086 .Bl -tag -compact -width "Ql \eNNN"
3092 an escape character.
3094 an escape character.
3106 emits a reverse solidus character.
3110 double quote (escaping is optional).
3112 eight-bit byte with the octal value
3114 (one to three octal digits), optionally prefixed by an additional
3116 A 0 byte will suppress further output for the quoted argument.
3118 eight-bit byte with the hexadecimal value
3120 (one or two hexadecimal characters).
3121 A 0 byte will suppress further output for the quoted argument.
3123 the Unicode / ISO-10646 character with the hexadecimal codepoint value
3125 (one to eight hexadecimal digits) \(em note that Unicode defines the
3126 maximum codepoint ever to be supported as
3131 This escape is only supported in locales which support Unicode (see
3132 .Sx "Character sets" ) ,
3133 in other cases the sequence will remain unexpanded unless the given code
3134 point is ASCII compatible or can be represented in the current locale.
3135 The character NUL will suppress further output for the quoted argument.
3139 except it takes only one to four hexadecimal digits.
3141 Emits the non-printable (ASCII and compatible) C0 control codes
3142 0 (NUL) to 31 (US), and 127 (DEL).
3143 Printable representations of ASCII control codes can be created by
3144 mapping them to a different part of the ASCII character set, which is
3145 possible by adding the number 64 for the codes 0 to 31, e.g., 7 (BEL) is
3146 .Ql 7 + 64 = 71 = G .
3147 The real operation is a bitwise logical XOR with 64 (bit 7 set, see
3149 thus also covering code 127 (DEL), which is mapped to 63 (question mark):
3150 .Ql ? vexpr ^ 127 64 .
3152 Whereas historically circumflex notation has often been used for
3153 visualization purposes of control codes, e.g.,
3155 the reverse solidus notation has been standardized:
3157 Some control codes also have standardized (ISO 10646, ISO C) aliases,
3158 as shown above (e.g.,
3162 whenever such an alias exists it will be used for display purposes.
3163 The control code NUL
3165 a non-standard extension) will suppress further output for the remains
3166 of the token (which may extend beyond the current quote), or, depending
3167 on the context, the remains of all arguments for the current command.
3169 Non-standard extension: expand the given variable name, as above.
3170 Brace enclosing the name is supported.
3172 Not yet supported, just to raise awareness: Non-standard extension.
3179 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3180 echo 'Quotes '${HOME}' and 'tokens" differ!"# no comment
3181 echo Quotes ${HOME} and tokens differ! # comment
3182 echo Don"'"t you worry$'\ex21' The sun shines on us. $'\eu263A'
3186 .\" .Ss "Raw data arguments for codec commands" {{{
3187 .Ss "Raw data arguments for codec commands"
3189 A special set of commands, which all have the string
3191 in their name, e.g.,
3195 take raw string data as input, which means that the content of the
3196 command input line is passed completely unexpanded and otherwise
3197 unchanged: like this the effect of the actual codec is visible without
3198 any noise of possible shell quoting rules etc., i.e., the user can input
3199 one-to-one the desired or questionable data.
3200 To gain a level of expansion, the entire command line can be
3204 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3205 ? vput shcodec res encode /usr/Sch\[:o]nes Wetter/heute.txt
3207 $'/usr/Sch\eu00F6nes Wetter/heute.txt'
3209 $'/usr/Sch\eu00F6nes Wetter/heute.txt'
3210 ? eval shcodec d $res
3211 /usr/Sch\[:o]nes Wetter/heute.txt
3215 .\" .Ss "Filename transformations" {{{
3216 .Ss "Filename transformations"
3218 Filenames, where expected, and unless documented otherwise, are
3219 subsequently subject to the following filename transformations, in
3222 .Bl -bullet -offset indent
3224 If the given name is a registered
3226 it will be replaced with the expanded shortcut.
3229 The filename is matched against the following patterns or strings:
3231 .Bl -hang -compact -width ".Ar %user"
3233 (Number sign) is expanded to the previous file.
3235 (Percent sign) is replaced by the invoking
3236 .Mx -ix "primary system mailbox"
3237 user's primary system mailbox, which either is the (itself expandable)
3239 if that is set, the standardized absolute pathname indicated by
3241 if that is set, or a builtin compile-time default otherwise.
3243 Expands to the primary system mailbox of
3245 (and never the value of
3247 regardless of its actual setting).
3249 (Ampersand) is replaced with the invoking users
3250 .Mx -ix "secondary mailbox"
3251 secondary mailbox, the
3258 directory (if that variable is set).
3260 Expands to the same value as
3262 but has special meaning when used with, e.g., the command
3264 the file will be treated as a primary system mailbox by, e.g., the
3268 commands, meaning that messages that have been read in the current
3269 session will be moved to the
3271 mailbox instead of simply being flagged as read.
3275 Meta expansions are applied to the resulting filename, as applicable to
3276 the resulting file access protocol (also see
3277 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" ) .
3278 If the fully expanded filename results in multiple pathnames and the
3279 command is expecting only one file, an error results.
3281 For the file-protocol, a leading tilde
3283 character will be replaced by the expansion of
3285 except when followed by a valid user name, in which case the home
3286 directory of the given user is used instead.
3288 In addition a shell expansion as if specified in double-quotes (see
3289 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting" )
3290 is applied, so that any occurrence of
3294 will be replaced by the expansion of the variable, if possible;
3295 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
3298 (shell) variables can be accessed through this mechanism.
3300 In interactive context, in order to allow simple value acceptance (via
3302 arguments will usually be displayed in a properly quoted form, e.g., a file
3303 .Ql diet\e is \ecurd.txt
3305 .Ql 'diet\e is \ecurd.txt' .
3309 .\" .Ss "Commands" {{{
3312 The following commands are available:
3314 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ic BaNg"
3321 command which follows, replacing unescaped exclamation marks with the
3322 previously executed command if the internal variable
3325 This command supports
3328 .Sx "Command modifiers" ,
3329 and manages the error number
3331 A 0 or positive exit status
3333 reflects the exit status of the command, negative ones that
3334 an error happened before the command was executed, or that the program
3335 did not exit cleanly, but, e.g., due to a signal: the error number is
3336 .Va ^ERR Ns -CHILD ,
3340 In conjunction with the
3342 modifier the following special cases exist:
3343 a negative exit status occurs if the collected data could not be stored
3344 in the given variable, which is a
3346 error that should otherwise not occur.
3347 .Va ^ERR Ns -CANCELED
3348 indicates that no temporary file could be created to collect the command
3349 output at first glance.
3350 In case of catchable out-of-memory situations
3352 will occur and \*(UA will try to store the empty string, just like with
3353 all other detected error conditions.
3358 The comment-command causes the entire line to be ignored.
3360 this really is a normal command which' purpose is to discard its
3363 indicating special character, which means that, e.g., trailing comments
3364 on a line are not possible.
3368 Goes to the next message in sequence and types it
3374 Display the preceding message, or the n'th previous message if given
3375 a numeric argument n.
3379 Show the current message number (the
3384 Show a brief summary of commands.
3385 \*(OP Given an argument a synopsis for the command in question is
3386 shown instead; commands can be abbreviated in general and this command
3387 can be used to see the full expansion of an abbreviation including the
3388 synopsis, try, e.g.,
3393 and see how the output changes.
3394 This mode also supports a more
3396 output, which will provide the informations documented for
3407 .It Ic account , unaccount
3408 (ac, una) Creates, selects or lists (an) account(s).
3409 Accounts are special incarnations of
3411 macros and group commands and variable settings which together usually
3412 arrange the environment for the purpose of creating an email account.
3413 Different to normal macros settings which are covered by
3415 \(en here by default enabled! \(en will not be reverted before the
3420 (case-insensitive) always exists, and all but it can be deleted by the
3421 latter command, and in one operation with the special name
3424 Without arguments a listing of all defined accounts is shown.
3425 With one argument the given account is activated: the system
3427 of that account will be activated (as via
3429 a possibly installed
3431 will be run, and the internal variable
3434 The two argument form is identical to defining a macro as via
3436 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3438 set folder=~/mail inbox=+syste.mbox record=+sent.mbox
3439 set from='(My Name) myname@myisp.example'
3440 set mta=smtp://mylogin@smtp.myisp.example
3447 Perform email address codec transformations on raw-data argument, rather
3448 according to email standards (RFC 5322; \*(ID will furtherly improve).
3452 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) ,
3453 and manages the error number
3455 The first argument must be either
3456 .Ar [+[+[+]]]e[ncode] ,
3460 and specifies the operation to perform on the rest of the line.
3463 Decoding will show how a standard-compliant MUA will display the given
3464 argument, which should be an email address.
3465 Please be aware that most MUAs have difficulties with the address
3466 standards, and vary wildly when (comments) in parenthesis,
3468 strings, or quoted-pairs, as below, become involved.
3469 \*(ID \*(UA currently does not perform decoding when displaying addresses.
3472 Skinning is identical to decoding but only outputs the plain address,
3473 without any string, comment etc. components.
3474 Another difference is that it may fail with the error number
3478 if decoding fails to find a(n) (valid) email address, in which case the
3479 unmodified input will be output again.
3482 Encoding supports four different modes, lesser automated versions can be
3483 chosen by prefixing one, two or three plus signs: the standard imposes
3484 a special meaning on some characters, which thus have to be transformed
3485 to so-called quoted-pairs by pairing them with a reverse solidus
3487 in order to remove the special meaning; this might change interpretation
3488 of the entire argument from what has been desired, however!
3489 Specify one plus sign to remark that parenthesis shall be left alone,
3490 two for not turning double quotation marks into quoted-pairs, and three
3491 for also leaving any user-specified reverse solidus alone.
3492 The result will always be valid, if a successful exit status is reported.
3493 \*(ID Addresses need to be specified in between angle brackets
3496 if the construct becomes more difficult, otherwise the current parser
3497 will fail; it is not smart enough to guess right.
3499 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3500 ? addrc enc "Hey, you",<diet@exam.ple>\e out\e there
3501 "\e"Hey, you\e", \e\e out\e\e there" <diet@exam.ple>
3502 ? addrc d "\e"Hey, you\e", \e\e out\e\e there" <diet@exam.ple>
3503 "Hey, you", \e out\e there <diet@exam.ple>
3504 ? addrc s "\e"Hey, you\e", \e\e out\e\e there" <diet@exam.ple>
3511 .It Ic alias , unalias
3512 (a, una) Aliases are a method of creating personal distribution lists
3513 that map a single alias name to none to multiple real receivers;
3514 these aliases become expanded after message composing is completed.
3515 The latter command removes the given list of aliases, the special name
3517 will discard all existing aliases.
3518 The former command shows all currently defined aliases when used without
3519 arguments, and with one argument the expansion of the given alias.
3520 With more than one argument, creates or appends to the alias name given
3521 as the first argument the remaining arguments.
3522 Alias names are restricted to alphabetic characters, digits, the
3523 underscore, hyphen-minus, the number sign, colon, commercial at and
3524 period, the last character can also be the dollar sign:
3525 .Ql [[:alnum:]_#:@.-]+$? .
3529 (alt) Manage a list of alternate addresses or names of the active user,
3530 members of which will be removed from recipient lists.
3531 Without arguments the current set of alternates is displayed, otherwise
3532 the set of alternate names is replaced by the given arguments, and the
3535 is updated accordingly.
3536 As an extension, if one argument is given and that is the hyphen-minus
3538 then the set of alternates is removed.
3539 There is a set of implicit alternates which is formed of the values of
3548 .It Ic answered , unanswered
3549 Take a message lists and mark each message as having been answered,
3550 having not been answered, respectively.
3551 Messages will be marked answered when being
3553 to automatically if the
3557 .Sx "Message states" .
3562 .It Ic bind , unbind
3563 \*(OP\*(NQ The bind command extends the MLE (see
3564 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
3565 with freely configurable key bindings.
3566 The latter command removes from the given context the given key binding,
3567 both of which may be specified as a wildcard
3571 will remove all bindings of all contexts.
3572 With one argument the former command shows all key bindings for the
3573 given context, specifying an asterisk
3575 will show the bindings of all contexts; a more verbose listing will be
3576 produced if either of
3581 With two or more arguments a binding is (re)established:
3582 the first argument is the context to which the binding shall apply,
3583 the second argument is a comma-separated list of the
3585 which form the binding, and any remaining arguments form the expansion.
3586 To indicate that a binding shall not be auto-committed, but that the
3587 expansion shall instead be furtherly editable by the user, a commercial at
3589 (that will be removed) can be placed last in the expansion, from which
3590 leading and trailing whitespace will finally be removed.
3591 Reverse solidus cannot be used as the last character of expansion.
3594 Contexts define when a binding applies, i.e., a binding will not be seen
3595 unless the context for which it is defined for is currently active.
3596 This is not true for the shared binding
3598 which is the foundation for all other bindings and as such always
3599 applies, its bindings, however, only apply secondarily.
3600 The available contexts are the shared
3604 context which is used in all not otherwise documented situations, and
3606 which applies to compose mode only.
3610 which form the binding are specified as a comma-separated list of
3611 byte-sequences, where each list entry corresponds to one key(press).
3612 \*(OPally a list entry may, indicated by a leading colon character
3614 also refer to the name of a terminal capability;
3615 several dozen names will be compiled into \*(UA and may be specified
3618 or, if existing, by their
3620 name, regardless of the actually used terminal control library.
3621 It is however possible to use any capability, as long as the name is
3622 resolvable by the control library or defined in the internal variable
3624 Input sequences are not case-normalized, so that an exact match is
3625 required to update or remove a binding.
3628 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3629 bind base $'\eE',d mle-snarf-word-fwd # Esc(ape)
3630 bind base $'\eE',$'\ec?' mle-snarf-word-bwd # Esc, Delete
3631 bind default $'\ecA',:khome,w 'echo An editable binding@'
3632 bind default a,b,c rm -rf / @ # Another editable binding
3633 bind default :kf1 File %
3634 bind compose :kf1 ~e
3638 Note that the entire comma-separated list is first parsed (over) as a
3639 shell-token with whitespace as the field separator, before being parsed
3640 and expanded for real with comma as the field separator, therefore
3641 whitespace needs to be properly quoted, see
3642 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting" .
3643 Using Unicode reverse solidus escape sequences renders a binding
3644 defunctional if the locale does not support Unicode (see
3645 .Sx "Character sets" ) ,
3646 and using terminal capabilities does so if no terminal control support
3647 is (currently) available.
3650 The following terminal capability names are builtin and can be used in
3652 or (if available) the two-letter
3654 notation regardless of the actually used library.
3655 See the respective manual for a list of capabilities.
3658 can be used to show all the capabilities of
3660 or the given terminal type;
3663 flag will also show supported (non-standard) extensions.
3666 .Bl -tag -compact -width kcuuf_or_kcuuf
3667 .It Cd kbs Ns \0or Cd kb
3669 .It Cd kdch1 Ns \0or Cd kD
3671 .It Cd kDC Ns \0or Cd *4
3672 \(em shifted variant.
3673 .It Cd kel Ns \0or Cd kE
3674 Clear to end of line.
3675 .It Cd kext Ns \0or Cd @9
3677 .It Cd kich1 Ns \0or Cd kI
3679 .It Cd kIC Ns \0or Cd #3
3680 \(em shifted variant.
3681 .It Cd khome Ns \0or Cd kh
3683 .It Cd kHOM Ns \0or Cd #2
3684 \(em shifted variant.
3685 .It Cd kend Ns \0or Cd @7
3687 .It Cd knp Ns \0or Cd kN
3689 .It Cd kpp Ns \0or Cd kP
3691 .It Cd kcub1 Ns \0or Cd kl
3692 Left cursor (with more modifiers: see below).
3693 .It Cd kLFT Ns \0or Cd #4
3694 \(em shifted variant.
3695 .It Cd kcuf1 Ns \0or Cd kr
3696 Right cursor (ditto).
3697 .It Cd kRIT Ns \0or Cd %i
3698 \(em shifted variant.
3699 .It Cd kcud1 Ns \0or Cd kd
3700 Down cursor (ditto).
3702 \(em shifted variant (only terminfo).
3703 .It Cd kcuu1 Ns \0or Cd ku
3706 \(em shifted variant (only terminfo).
3707 .It Cd kf0 Ns \0or Cd k0
3709 Add one for each function key up to
3714 .It Cd kf10 Ns \0or Cd k;
3716 .It Cd kf11 Ns \0or Cd F1
3718 Add one for each function key up to
3726 Some terminals support key-modifier combination extensions, e.g.,
3728 For example, the delete key,
3730 in its shifted variant, the name is mutated to
3732 then a number is appended for the states
3744 .Ql Shift+Alt+Control
3746 The same for the left cursor key,
3748 .Cd KLFT , KLFT3 , KLFT4 , KLFT5 , KLFT6 , KLFT7 , KLFT8 .
3751 Key bindings can be removed with the command
3753 It is advisable to use an initial escape or other control character (e.g.,
3755 for bindings which describe user key combinations (as opposed to purely
3756 terminal capability based ones), in order to avoid ambiguities whether
3757 input belongs to key sequences or not; it also reduces search time.
3760 may help shall keys and sequences be falsely recognized.
3765 \*(NQ Calls the given macro, which must have been created via
3770 Parameters given to macros are implicitly local to the macro's scope, and
3771 may be accessed via special (positional) parameters, e.g.,
3776 The positional parameters may be removed by
3778 ing them off the stack (exceeding the supported number of arguments
3780 .Va ^ERR Ns -OVERFLOW ) ,
3781 and are otherwise controllable via
3783 Macro execution can be terminated at any time by calling
3786 Calling macros recursively will at some time excess the stack size
3787 limit, causing a hard program abortion; if recursively calling a macro
3788 is the last command of the current macro, consider to use the command
3790 which will first release all resources of the current macro before
3791 replacing the current macro with the called one.
3792 Numeric and string operations can be performed via
3796 may be helpful to recreate argument lists.
3797 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3799 echo Parameter 1 of ${#} is ${1}, all: ${*} / ${@}
3802 call exmac Hello macro exmac!
3809 if the given macro has been created via
3811 but doesn't fail nor warn if the macro doesn't exist.
3815 (ch) Change the working directory to
3817 or the given argument.
3823 \*(OP Only applicable to S/MIME signed messages.
3824 Takes a message list and a file name and saves the certificates
3825 contained within the message signatures to the named file in both
3826 human-readable and PEM format.
3827 The certificates can later be used to send encrypted messages to the
3828 respective message senders by setting
3829 .Va smime-encrypt-USER@HOST
3834 .It Ic charsetalias , uncharsetalias
3835 \*(NQ Manage (character set conversion) character set alias mappings,
3836 as documented in the section
3837 .Sx "Character sets" .
3838 Character set aliases are expanded recursively, but no expansion is
3839 performed on values of the user-settable variables, e.g.,
3841 These are effectively no-operations if character set conversion
3842 is not available (i.e., no
3846 Without arguments the list of all currently defined aliases is shown,
3847 with one argument the expansion of the given alias.
3848 Otherwise all given arguments are treated as pairs of character sets and
3849 their desired target alias name, creating new or changing already
3850 existing aliases, as necessary.
3852 The latter deletes all aliases given as arguments, the special argument
3854 will remove all aliases.
3858 (ch) Change the working directory to
3860 or the given argument.
3866 .It Ic collapse , uncollapse
3867 Only applicable to threaded mode.
3868 Takes a message list and makes all replies to these messages invisible
3869 in header summaries, except for
3873 Also when a message with collapsed replies is displayed,
3874 all of these are automatically uncollapsed.
3875 The latter command undoes collapsing.
3880 .It Ic colour , uncolour
3881 \*(OP\*(NQ Manage colour mappings of and for a
3882 .Sx "Coloured display" .
3883 The type of colour is given as the (case-insensitive) first argument,
3884 which must be one of
3886 for 256-colour terminals,
3891 for the standard 8-colour ANSI / ISO 6429 color palette and
3895 for monochrome terminals.
3896 Monochrome terminals cannot deal with colours, but only (some) font
3900 Without further arguments the list of all currently defined mappings
3901 for the given colour type is shown (as a special case giving
3905 will show the mappings of all types).
3906 Otherwise the second argument defines the mappable slot, and the third
3907 argument a (comma-separated list of) colour and font attribute
3908 specification(s), and the optional fourth argument can be used to
3909 specify a precondition: if conditioned mappings exist they are tested in
3910 (creation) order unless a (case-insensitive) match has been found, and
3911 the default mapping (if any has been established) will only be chosen as
3913 The types of precondition available depend on the mappable slot (see
3914 .Sx "Coloured display"
3915 for some examples), the following of which exist:
3918 Mappings prefixed with
3920 are used for the \*(OPal builtin Mailx-Line-Editor (MLE, see
3921 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
3922 and do not support preconditions.
3924 .Bl -tag -compact -width view-partinfo
3926 This mapping is used for the position indicator that is visible when
3927 a line cannot be fully displayed on the screen.
3934 Mappings prefixed with
3936 are used in header summaries, and they all understand the preconditions
3938 (the current message) and
3940 for elder messages (only honoured in conjunction with
3941 .Va datefield-markout-older ) .
3943 .Bl -tag -compact -width view-partinfo
3945 This mapping is used for the
3947 that can be created with the
3951 formats of the variable
3954 For the complete header summary line except the
3956 and the thread structure.
3958 For the thread structure which can be created with the
3960 format of the variable
3965 Mappings prefixed with
3967 are used when displaying messages.
3969 .Bl -tag -compact -width view-partinfo
3971 This mapping is used for so-called
3973 lines, which are MBOX file format specific header lines.
3976 A comma-separated list of headers to which the mapping applies may be
3977 given as a precondition; if the \*(OPal regular expression support is
3978 available then if any of the
3980 (extended) regular expression characters is seen the precondition will
3981 be evaluated as (an extended) one.
3983 For the introductional message info line.
3984 .It Ar view-partinfo
3985 For MIME part info lines.
3989 The following (case-insensitive) colour definitions and font attributes
3990 are understood, multiple of which can be specified in a comma-separated
4000 It is possible (and often applicable) to specify multiple font
4001 attributes for a single mapping.
4004 foreground colour attribute:
4014 To specify a 256-color mode a decimal number colour specification in
4015 the range 0 to 255, inclusive, is supported, and interpreted as follows:
4017 .Bl -tag -compact -width "999 - 999"
4019 the standard ISO 6429 colors, as above.
4021 high intensity variants of the standard colors.
4023 216 colors in tuples of 6.
4025 grayscale from black to white in 24 steps.
4027 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4029 fg() { printf "\e033[38;5;${1}m($1)"; }
4030 bg() { printf "\e033[48;5;${1}m($1)"; }
4032 while [ $i -lt 256 ]; do fg $i; i=$(($i + 1)); done
4033 printf "\e033[0m\en"
4035 while [ $i -lt 256 ]; do bg $i; i=$(($i + 1)); done
4036 printf "\e033[0m\en"
4040 background colour attribute (see
4042 for possible values).
4048 will remove for the given colour type (the special type
4050 selects all) the given mapping; if the optional precondition argument is
4051 given only the exact tuple of mapping and precondition is removed.
4054 will remove all mappings (no precondition allowed), thus
4056 will remove all established mappings.
4061 .It Ic commandalias , uncommandalias
4062 \*(NQ Define or list, and remove, respectively, command aliases.
4063 An (command)alias can be used everywhere a normal command can be used,
4064 but always takes precedence: any arguments that are given to the command
4065 alias are joined onto the alias expansion, and the resulting string
4066 forms the command line that is, in effect, executed.
4067 The latter command removes all given aliases, the special name
4069 will remove all existing aliases.
4070 When used without arguments the former shows a list of all currently
4071 known aliases, with one argument only the expansion of the given one.
4073 With two or more arguments a command alias is defined or updated: the
4074 first argument is the name under which the remaining command line should
4075 be accessible, the content of which can be just about anything.
4076 An alias may itself expand to another alias, but to avoid expansion loops
4077 further expansion will be prevented if an alias refers to itself or if
4078 an expansion depth limit is reached.
4079 Explicit expansion prevention via reverse solidus
4082 .Sx "Command modifiers" .
4083 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4085 \*(uA: `commandalias': no such alias: xx
4086 ? commandalias xx echo hello,
4088 commandalias xx 'echo hello,'
4097 (C) Copy messages to files whose names are derived from the author of
4098 the respective message and do not mark them as being saved;
4099 otherwise identical to
4104 (c) Copy messages to the named file and do not mark them as being saved;
4105 otherwise identical to
4110 Show the name of the current working directory, as reported by
4115 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) .
4116 The return status is tracked via
4121 \*(OP For unencrypted messages this command is identical to
4123 Encrypted messages are first decrypted, if possible, and then copied.
4127 \*(OP For unencrypted messages this command is identical to
4129 Encrypted messages are first decrypted, if possible, and then copied.
4133 .It Ic define , undefine
4134 Without arguments the current list of macros, including their content,
4135 is shown, otherwise a macro is defined, replacing an existing macro of
4137 A macro definition is a sequence of commands in the following form:
4138 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4147 A defined macro can be invoked explicitly by using the
4151 commands, or implicitly if a macro hook is triggered, e.g., a
4153 It is possible to localize adjustments, like creation, deletion and
4155 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ,
4158 command; the scope which is localized depends on how (i.e.,
4160 normal macro, folder hook, hook,
4162 switch) the macro is invoked.
4163 Execution of a macro body can be stopped from within by calling
4167 ed macro, given positional parameters can be
4171 The latter command deletes the given macro, the special name
4173 will discard all existing macros.
4174 Creation and deletion of (a) macro(s) can be performed from within
4179 .It Ic delete , undelete
4180 (d, u) Marks the given message list as being or not being
4182 respectively; if no argument has been specified then the usual search
4183 for a visible message is performed, as documented for
4184 .Sx "Message list arguments" ,
4185 showing only the next input prompt if the search fails.
4186 Deleted messages will neither be saved in the
4188 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
4190 nor will they be available for most other commands.
4193 variable is set, the new
4195 or the last message restored, respectively, is automatically
4205 Superseded by the multiplexer
4211 Delete the given messages and automatically
4215 if one exists, regardless of the setting of
4222 up or down by one message when given
4226 argument, respectively.
4230 .It Ic draft , undraft
4231 Take message lists and mark each given message as being draft, or not
4232 being draft, respectively, as documented in the section
4233 .Sx "Message states" .
4237 \*(NQ (ec) Echoes arguments to standard output and writes a trailing
4238 newline, whereas the otherwise identical
4241 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
4243 .Sx "Filename transformations"
4244 are applied to the expanded arguments.
4250 except that is echoes to standard error.
4258 but does not write a trailing newline.
4264 but does not write a trailing newline.
4268 (e) Point the text editor (as defined in
4270 at each message from the given list in turn.
4271 Modified contents are discarded unless the
4273 variable is set, and are not used unless the mailbox can be written to
4274 and the editor returns a successful exit status.
4279 .Ic if Ns \0/\: Ic elif Ns \0/\: Ic else Ns \0/\: Ic endif
4280 conditional \(em if the condition of a preceding
4282 was false, check the following condition and execute the following block
4283 if it evaluates true.
4288 .Ic if Ns \0/\: Ic elif Ns \0/\: Ic else Ns \0/\: Ic endif
4289 conditional \(em if none of the conditions of the preceding
4293 commands was true, the
4299 (en) Marks the end of an
4300 .Ic if Ns \0/\: Ic elif Ns \0/\: Ic else Ns \0/\: Ic endif
4301 conditional execution block.
4306 \*(NQ \*(UA has a strict notion about which variables are
4307 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
4308 and which are managed in the program
4310 Since some of the latter are a vivid part of \*(UAs functioning,
4311 however, they are transparently integrated into the normal handling of
4312 internal variables via
4316 To integrate other environment variables of choice into this
4317 transparent handling, and also to export internal variables into the
4318 process environment where they normally are not, a
4320 needs to become established with this command, as in, e.g.,
4323 .Dl environ link PERL5LIB from TZ
4326 Afterwards changing such variables with
4328 will cause automatic updates of the program environment, and therefore
4329 be inherited by newly created child processes.
4330 Sufficient system support provided (it was in BSD as early as 1987, and
4331 is standardized since Y2K) removing such variables with
4333 will remove them also from the program environment, but in any way
4334 the knowledge they ever have been
4337 Note this implies that
4339 may cause loss of links.
4344 will remove an existing link, but leaves the variables as such intact.
4345 Additionally the subcommands
4349 are provided, which work exactly the same as the documented commands
4353 but (additionally) link the variable(s) with the program environment and
4354 thus immediately export them to, or remove them from (if possible),
4355 respectively, the program environment.
4360 \*(OP Since \*(UA uses the console as a user interface it can happen
4361 that messages scroll by too fast to become recognized.
4362 Optionally an error message ring queue is available which stores
4363 duplicates of any error message and notifies the user in interactive
4364 sessions whenever a new error has occurred.
4365 The queue is finite: if its maximum size is reached any new message
4366 replaces the eldest.
4369 can be used to manage this message queue: if given
4371 or no argument the queue will be displayed and cleared,
4373 will only clear all messages from the queue.
4377 \*(NQ Construct a command by concatenating the arguments, separated with
4378 a single space character, and then evaluate the result.
4379 This command passes through the exit status
4383 of the evaluated command; also see
4385 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4387 # Like this, sh(1)ell-stylish from begin to end: works!
4388 # Result status ends up in $!, then
4389 localopts 1;wysh set verbose;ignerr eval "${@}";return ${?}
4391 commandalias xv '\ecall xverbose'
4404 call yyy '\ecall xxx' "b\e$'\et'u ' "
4412 (ex or x) Exit from \*(UA without changing the active mailbox and skip
4413 any saving of messages in the
4415 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
4417 as well as a possibly tracked line editor history file.
4423 but open the mailbox read-only.
4428 (fi) The file command switches to a new mailbox.
4429 Without arguments it shows status information of the current mailbox.
4430 If an argument is given, it will write out changes (such as deletions)
4431 the user has made, open a new mailbox and update the internal variables
4432 .Va mailbox-resolved
4434 .Va mailbox-display .
4435 .Sx "Filename transformations"
4436 will be applied to the
4440 prefixes are understood, e.g.,
4441 .Ql maildir:///tmp/mdirbox :
4442 if a protocol prefix is used the mailbox type is fixated and neither
4443 the auto-detection (read on) nor the
4446 \*(OPally URLs can also be used to access network resources, see
4447 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" :
4450 .Dl \*(IN protocol://[user[:password]@]host[:port][/path]
4451 .Dl \*(OU protocol://[user@]host[:port][/path]
4454 \*(OPally supported network protocols are
4458 (POP3 with SSL/TLS encrypted transport),
4460 part is valid only for IMAP; there it defaults to
4462 Network URLs require a special encoding as documented in the said section.
4465 If the resulting file protocol (MBOX database)
4467 is located on a local filesystem then the list of all registered
4469 s is traversed in order to see whether a transparent intermediate
4470 conversion step is necessary to handle the given mailbox, in which case
4471 \*(UA will use the found hook to load and save data into and from
4472 a temporary file, respectively.
4473 Changing hooks will not affect already opened mailboxes.
4474 For example, the following creates hooks for the
4476 compression tool and a combined compressed and encrypted format:
4478 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4480 gzip 'gzip -dc' 'gzip -c' \e
4481 zst.pgp 'gpg -d | zstd -dc' 'zstd -19 -zc | gpg -e'
4485 MBOX database files are generally locked during file operations in order
4486 to avoid inconsistencies due to concurrent modifications.
4487 \*(OPal Mailbox files which \*(UA treats as the system
4492 .Sx "primary system mailbox" Ns
4493 es in general will also be protected by so-called dotlock files, the
4494 traditional way of mail spool file locking: for any file
4498 will be created for the duration of the synchronization \(em
4499 as necessary a privilege-separated dotlock child process will be used
4500 to accommodate for necessary privilege adjustments in order to create
4501 the dotlock file in the same directory
4502 and with the same user and group identities as the file of interest.
4505 \*(UA by default uses tolerant POSIX rules when reading MBOX database
4506 files, but it will detect invalid message boundaries in this mode and
4507 complain (even more with
4509 if any is seen: in this case
4511 can be used to create a valid MBOX database from the invalid input.
4514 If no protocol has been fixated, and
4516 refers to a directory with the subdirectories
4521 then it is treated as a folder in
4524 \*(ID Also, if no protocol has been fixated and no existing file has
4525 been found, the variable
4527 controls the format of mailboxes yet to be created.
4532 .It Ic filetype , unfiletype
4533 \*(NQ Define or list, and remove, respectively, file handler hooks,
4534 which provide (shell) commands that enable \*(UA to load and save MBOX
4535 files from and to files with the registered file extensions;
4536 it will use an intermediate temporary file to store the plain data.
4537 The latter command removes the hooks for all given extensions,
4539 will remove all existing handlers.
4541 When used without arguments the former shows a list of all currently
4542 defined file hooks, with one argument the expansion of the given alias.
4543 Otherwise three arguments are expected, the first specifying the file
4544 extension for which the hook is meant, and the second and third defining
4545 the load- and save commands, respectively, to deal with the file type,
4546 both of which must read from standard input and write to standard
4548 Changing hooks will not affect already opened mailboxes (\*(ID except below).
4549 \*(ID For now too much work is done, and files are oftened read in twice
4550 where once would be sufficient: this can cause problems if a filetype is
4551 changed while such a file is opened; this was already so with the
4552 builtin support of .gz etc. in Heirloom, and will vanish in v15.
4553 \*(ID For now all handler strings are passed to the
4554 .Ev SHELL for evaluation purposes; in the future a
4556 prefix to load and save commands may mean to bypass this shell instance:
4557 placing a leading space will avoid any possible misinterpretations.
4558 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4559 filetype bz2 'bzip2 -dc' 'bzip2 -zc' \e
4560 gz 'gzip -dc' 'gzip -c' xz 'xz -dc' 'xz -zc' \e
4561 zst 'zstd -dc' 'zstd -19 -zc' \e
4562 zst.pgp 'gpg -d | zstd -dc' 'zstd -19 -zc | gpg -e'
4563 set record=+sent.zst.pgp
4568 .It Ic flag , unflag
4569 Take message lists and mark the messages as being flagged, or not being
4570 flagged, respectively, for urgent/special attention.
4572 .Sx "Message states" .
4581 With no arguments, list the names of the folders in the folder directory.
4582 With an existing folder as an argument,
4583 lists the names of folders below the named folder.
4589 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the first
4590 recipient's address (instead of in
4597 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the first
4598 recipient's address (instead of in
4605 but responds to all recipients regardless of the
4610 .It Ic followupsender
4613 but responds to the sender only regardless of the
4629 (f) Takes a list of message specifications and displays a summary of
4630 their message headers, exactly as via
4632 An alias of this command is
4635 .Sx "Specifying messages" .
4641 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the
4642 recipient's address (instead of in
4647 Takes a message and the address of a recipient
4648 and forwards the message to him.
4649 The text of the original message is included in the new one,
4650 with the value of the
4652 variable preceding it.
4653 To filter the included header fields to the desired subset use the
4655 slot of the white- and blacklisting command
4657 Only the first part of a multipart message is included unless
4658 .Va forward-as-attachment ,
4659 and recipient addresses will be stripped from comments, names etc.
4660 unless the internal variable
4666 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
4671 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
4676 .It Ic ghost , unghost
4679 .Ic uncommandalias .
4683 .It Ic headerpick , unheaderpick
4684 \*(NQ Multiplexer command to manage white- and blacklisting
4685 selections of header fields for a variety of applications.
4686 Without arguments the set of contexts that have settings is displayed.
4687 When given arguments, the first argument is the context to which the
4688 command applies, one of (case-insensitively)
4690 for display purposes (via, e.g.,
4693 for selecting which headers shall be stored persistently when
4699 ing messages (note that MIME related etc. header fields should not be
4700 ignored in order to not destroy usability of the message in this case),
4702 for stripping down messages when
4704 ing message (has no effect if
4705 .Va forward-as-attachment
4708 for defining user-defined set of fields for the command
4712 The current settings of the given context are displayed if only the
4713 first argument is given.
4714 A second argument denotes the type of restriction that is to be chosen,
4715 it may be (a case-insensitive prefix of)
4719 for white- and blacklisting purposes, respectively.
4720 Establishing a whitelist suppresses inspection of the corresponding
4722 If no further argument is given the current settings of the given type
4723 will be displayed, otherwise the remaining arguments specify header
4724 fields, which \*(OPally may be given as regular expressions, to be be
4725 added to the given type.
4726 The special wildcard field (asterisk,
4728 will establish a (fast) shorthand setting which covers all fields.
4730 The latter command always takes three or more arguments and can be used
4731 to remove fields from the given type of list of the given context, the
4734 will remove all fields.
4739 (h) Show the current group of headers, the size of which depends on
4742 and the style of which can be adjusted with the variable
4744 If a message-specification is given the group of headers containing the
4745 first message therein is shown and the message at the top of the screen
4758 (this mode also supports a more
4762 the list of history entries;
4765 argument selects and evaluates the respective history entry,
4766 which will become the new history top; a negative number is used as an
4767 offset to the current command, e.g.,
4769 will select the last command, the history top.
4770 The default mode if no arguments are given is
4777 Takes a message list and marks each message therein to be saved in the
4782 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
4784 Does not override the
4787 \*(UA deviates from the POSIX standard with this command, because a
4789 command issued after
4791 will display the following message, not the current one.
4796 (i) Part of the nestable
4797 .Ic if Ns \0/\: Ic elif Ns \0/\: Ic else Ns \0/\: Ic endif
4798 conditional execution construct \(em if the given condition is true then
4799 the encapsulated block is executed.
4800 The POSIX standards supports the (case-insensitive) conditions
4805 end, all remaining conditions are non-portable extensions.
4806 (Be aware that a faulty condition skips all following branches until
4808 \*(ID These commands do not yet use
4809 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
4810 and therefore do not know about input tokens, so that syntax
4811 elements have to be surrounded by whitespace; in v15 \*(UA will inspect
4812 all conditions bracket group wise and consider the tokens, representing
4813 values and operators, therein, which also means that variables will
4814 already have been expanded at that time (just like in the shell).
4816 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4825 The (case-insensitive) condition
4827 erminal will evaluate to true if the standard input is a terminal, i.e.,
4828 in interactive sessions.
4829 Another condition can be any boolean value (see the section
4830 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
4831 for textual boolean representations) to mark an enwrapped block as
4834 .Dq always execute .
4837 \*(ID It is possible to check
4838 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
4841 variables for existence or compare their expansion against a user given
4842 value or another variable by using the
4844 .Pf ( Dq variable next )
4845 conditional trigger character;
4846 a variable on the right hand side may be signalled using the same
4848 Variable names may be enclosed in a pair of matching braces.
4849 When this mode has been triggered, several operators are available:
4852 Integer operators treat the arguments on the left and right hand side of
4853 the operator as integral numbers and compare them arithmetically.
4854 It is an error if any of the operands is not a valid integer, an empty
4855 argument (which implies it had been quoted) is treated as if it were 0.
4856 Available operators are
4860 (less than or equal to),
4866 (greater than or equal to), and
4871 String data operators compare the left and right hand side according to
4872 their textual content.
4873 Unset variables are treated as the empty string.
4874 The behaviour of string operators can be adjusted by prefixing the
4875 operator with the modifier trigger commercial at
4877 followed by none to multiple modifiers: for now supported is
4879 which turns the comparison into a case-insensitive one: this is
4880 implied if no modifier follows the trigger.
4883 Available string operators are
4887 (less than or equal to),
4893 (greater than or equal to),
4897 (is substring of) and
4899 (is not substring of).
4900 By default these operators work on bytes and (therefore) do not take
4901 into account character set specifics.
4902 If the case-insensitivity modifier has been used, case is ignored
4903 according to the rules of the US-ASCII encoding, i.e., bytes are
4907 When the \*(OPal regular expression support is available, the additional
4913 They treat the right hand side as an extended regular expression that is
4914 matched according to the active
4916 locale, i.e., character sets should be honoured correctly.
4919 Conditions can be joined via AND-OR lists (where the AND operator is
4921 and the OR operator is
4923 which have equal precedence and will be evaluated with left
4924 associativity, thus using the same syntax that is known for the
4926 It is also possible to form groups of conditions and lists by enclosing
4927 them in pairs of brackets
4928 .Ql [\ \&.\&.\&.\ ] ,
4929 which may be interlocked within each other, and also be joined via
4933 The results of individual conditions and entire groups may be modified
4934 via unary operators: the unary operator
4936 will reverse the result.
4938 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4942 if [ "$ttycharset" == UTF-8 ] || [ "$ttycharset" @i== UTF8 ]
4943 echo *ttycharset* is UTF-8, the former case-sensitive!
4946 if [ "${t1}" == "${t2}" ]
4947 echo These two variables are equal
4949 # This is a string test, -ge has been added for v14.9.0
4950 if [ "$features" =% +regex ] && [ "$TERM" @i=~ "^xterm\&.*" ]
4951 echo ..in an X terminal
4953 if [ [ true ] && [ [ "${debug}" != '' ] || \e
4954 [ "$verbose" != '' ] ] ]
4957 if true && [ "$debug" != '' ] || [ "${verbose}" != '' ]
4958 echo Left associativity, as is known from the shell
4960 if ! ! true && ! [ ! "$debug" && ! "$verbose" ]
4961 echo Unary operator support
4970 Superseded by the multiplexer
4975 Shows the names of all available commands, alphabetically sorted.
4976 If given any non-whitespace argument the list will be shown in the order
4977 in which command prefixes are searched.
4978 \*(OP In conjunction with a set variable
4980 additional information will be provided for each command: the argument
4981 type will be indicated, the documentation string will be shown,
4982 and the set of command flags will show up:
4984 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql BaNg"
4985 .It Ql "vput modifier"
4986 command supports the command modifier
4988 .It Ql "errno in *!*"
4989 the error number is tracked in
4992 commands needs an active mailbox, a
4994 .It Ql "ok: batch or interactive"
4995 command may only be used in interactive or
4998 .It Ql "ok: send mode"
4999 command can be used in send mode.
5000 .It Ql "not ok: compose mode"
5001 command is not available when in compose mode.
5002 .It Ql "not ok: during startup"
5003 command cannot be used during program startup, e.g., while loading
5004 .Sx "Resource files" .
5005 .It Ql "ok: in subprocess"
5006 command is allowed to be used when running in a subprocess instance,
5007 e.g., from within a macro that is called via
5008 .Va on-compose-splice .
5013 This command can be used to localize changes to variables, meaning that
5014 their state will be reverted to the former one once the covered scope
5016 It can only be used inside of macro definition blocks introduced by
5020 and is interpreted as a boolean (string, see
5021 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ) ;
5024 of an account is left once it is switched off again.
5025 .Bd -literal -offset indent
5026 define temporary_settings {
5027 set possibly_global_option1
5032 set possibly_global_option2
5041 enables change localization and calls
5043 which explicitly resets localization, then any value changes within
5045 will still be reverted by
5047 \*(ID Once the outermost level, the one which enabled localization
5048 first, is left, but no earlier, all adjustments will be unrolled.
5049 \*(ID Likewise worth knowing, if in this example
5051 changes to a different
5053 which sets some variables that are yet covered by localizations, their
5054 scope will be extended, and in fact leaving the
5056 will (thus) restore settings in (likely) global scope which actually
5057 were defined in a local, private context.
5061 Reply to messages that come in via known
5064 .Pf ( Ic mlsubscribe )
5065 mailing lists, or pretend to do so (see
5066 .Sx "Mailing lists" ) :
5069 functionality this will actively resort and even remove message
5070 recipients in order to generate a message that is supposed to be sent to
5072 For example it will also implicitly generate a
5073 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
5074 header if that seems useful, regardless of the setting of the variable
5076 For more documentation please refer to
5077 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" .
5083 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the first
5084 recipient's address (instead of in
5089 (m) Takes a (list of) recipient address(es) as (an) argument(s),
5090 or asks on standard input if none were given;
5091 then collects the remaining mail content and sends it out.
5092 For more documentation please refer to
5093 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" .
5097 (mb) The given message list is to be sent to the
5099 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
5101 when \*(UA is quit; this is the default action unless the variable
5104 \*(ID This command can only be used in a
5106 .Sx "primary system mailbox" .
5110 .It Ic mimetype , unmimetype
5111 Without arguments the content of the MIME type cache will displayed;
5112 a more verbose listing will be produced if either of
5117 When given arguments they will be joined, interpreted as shown in
5118 .Sx "The mime.types files"
5120 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" ) ,
5121 and the resulting entry will be added (prepended) to the cache.
5122 In any event MIME type sources are loaded first as necessary \(en
5123 .Va mimetypes-load-control
5124 can be used to fine-tune which sources are actually loaded.
5126 The latter command deletes all specifications of the given MIME type, thus
5127 .Ql ? unmimetype text/plain
5128 will remove all registered specifications for the MIME type
5132 will discard all existing MIME types, just as will
5134 but which also reenables cache initialization via
5135 .Va mimetypes-load-control .
5139 .It Ic mlist , unmlist
5140 The latter command removes all given mailing-lists, the special name
5142 can be used to remove all registered lists.
5143 The former will list all currently defined mailing lists (and their
5144 attributes, if any) when used without arguments; a more verbose listing
5145 will be produced if either of
5150 Otherwise all given arguments will be added and henceforth be recognized
5152 If the \*(OPal regular expression support is available then mailing
5153 lists may also be specified as (extended) regular expressions (see
5159 .It Ic mlsubscribe , unmlsubscribe
5160 The latter command removes the subscription attribute from all given
5161 mailing-lists, the special name
5163 can be used to do so for any registered list.
5164 The former will list all currently defined mailing lists which have
5165 a subscription attribute when used without arguments; a more verbose
5166 listing will be produced if either of
5171 Otherwise this attribute will be set for all given mailing lists,
5172 newly creating them as necessary (as via
5181 but moves the messages to a file named after the local part of the
5182 sender address of the first message (instead of in
5189 but marks the messages for deletion if they were transferred
5196 but also displays header fields which would not pass the
5198 selection, and all MIME parts.
5206 on the given messages, even in non-interactive mode and as long as the
5207 standard output is a terminal.
5213 \*(OP When used without arguments or if
5215 has been given the content of the
5217 cache is shown, loading it first as necessary.
5220 then the cache will only be initialized and
5222 will remove its contents.
5223 Note that \*(UA will try to load the file only once, use
5224 .Ql Ic \&\&netrc Ns \:\0\:clear
5225 to unlock further attempts.
5230 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" ;
5232 .Sx "The .netrc file"
5233 documents the file format in detail.
5237 Checks for new mail in the current folder without committing any changes
5239 If new mail is present, a message is shown.
5243 the headers of each new message are also shown.
5244 This command is not available for all mailbox types.
5252 Goes to the next message in sequence and types it.
5253 With an argument list, types the next matching message.
5267 If the current folder is accessed via a network connection, a
5269 command is sent, otherwise no operation is performed.
5275 but also displays header fields which would not pass the
5277 selection, and all MIME parts.
5285 on the given messages, even in non-interactive mode and as long as the
5286 standard output is a terminal.
5292 \*(ID Only available in interactive mode, this command allows to show
5293 MIME parts which require external MIME handler programs to run which do
5294 not integrate in \*(UAs normal
5297 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" ) .
5298 The user will be asked for each non-text part of the given message in
5299 (\*(ID no syntax to directly address parts, this restriction may vanish)
5300 turn whether the registered handler shall be used to display the part.
5306 but also pipes header fields which would not pass the
5308 selection, and all parts of MIME
5309 .Ql multipart/alternative
5314 (pi) Takes a message list and a shell command
5315 and pipes the messages through the command.
5316 Without an argument the current message is piped through the command
5323 every message is followed by a formfeed character.
5344 (q) Terminates the session, saving all undeleted, unsaved messages in
5347 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
5349 preserving all messages marked with
5353 or never referenced in the system
5355 and removing all other messages from the
5357 .Sx "primary system mailbox" .
5358 If new mail has arrived during the session,
5360 .Dq You have new mail
5362 If given while editing a mailbox file with the command line option
5364 then the edit file is rewritten.
5365 A return to the shell is effected,
5366 unless the rewrite of edit file fails,
5367 in which case the user can escape with the exit command.
5371 \*(NQ Read a line from standard input, or the channel set active via
5373 and assign the data, which will be splitted as indicated by
5375 to the given variables.
5376 The variable names are checked by the same rules as documented for
5378 and the same error codes will be seen in
5382 indicates the number of bytes read, it will be
5384 with the error number
5388 in case of I/O errors, or
5391 If there are more fields than variables, assigns successive fields to the
5392 last given variable.
5393 If there are less fields than variables, assigns the empty string to the
5395 .Bd -literal -offset indent
5398 ? echo "<$a> <$b> <$c>"
5400 ? wysh set ifs=:; read a b c;unset ifs
5401 hey2.0,:"'you ",:world!:mars.:
5402 ? echo $?/$^ERRNAME / <$a><$b><$c>
5403 0/NONE / <hey2.0,><"'you ",><world!:mars.:><><>
5408 \*(NQ Manages input channels for
5410 to be used to avoid complicated or impracticable code, like calling
5412 from within a macro in non-interactive mode.
5413 Without arguments, or when the first argument is
5415 a listing of all known channels is printed.
5416 Channels can otherwise be
5418 d, and existing channels can be
5422 d by giving the string used for creation.
5424 The channel name is expected to be a file descriptor number, or,
5425 if parsing the numeric fails, an input file name that undergoes
5426 .Sx "Filename transformations" .
5427 E.g. (this example requires a modern shell):
5428 .Bd -literal -offset indent
5429 $ LC_ALL=C printf 'echon "hey, "\enread a\enyou\enecho $a' |\e
5432 $ LC_ALL=C printf 'echon "hey, "\enread a\enecho $a' |\e
5433 LC_ALL=C 6<<< 'you' \*(uA -R#X'readctl create 6'
5447 Removes the named files or directories.
5448 If a name refer to a mailbox, e.g., a Maildir mailbox, then a mailbox
5449 type specific removal will be performed, deleting the complete mailbox.
5450 The user is asked for confirmation in interactive mode.
5454 Takes the name of an existing folder
5455 and the name for the new folder
5456 and renames the first to the second one.
5457 Both folders must be of the same type.
5461 (R) Reply to originator.
5462 Does not reply to other recipients of the original message.
5464 will exchange this command with
5466 Unless the internal variable
5468 is set the recipient address will be stripped from comments, names etc.
5472 (r) Take a message and group-responds to it by addressing the sender
5473 and all recipients, subject to
5477 .Va followup-to-honour ,
5480 .Va recipients-in-cc
5481 influence response behaviour.
5482 Unless the internal variable
5484 is set recipient addresses will be stripped from comments, names etc.
5494 offers special support for replying to mailing lists.
5495 For more documentation please refer to
5496 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" .
5502 but initiates a group-reply regardless of the value of
5509 but responds to the sender only regardless of the value of
5516 but does not add any header lines.
5517 This is not a way to hide the sender's identity,
5518 but useful for sending a message again to the same recipients.
5522 Takes a list of messages and a user name
5523 and sends each message to the named user.
5525 and related header fields are prepended to the new copy of the message.
5528 is only performed if
5548 .It Ic respondsender
5554 (ret) Superseded by the multiplexer
5559 Only available inside the scope of a
5563 this will stop evaluation of any further macro content, and return
5564 execution control to the caller.
5565 The two optional parameters must be specified as positive decimal
5566 numbers and default to the value 0:
5567 the first argument specifies the signed 32-bit return value (stored in
5569 and later extended to signed 64-bit),
5570 the second the signed 32-bit error number (stored in
5574 a non-0 exit status may cause the program to exit.
5580 but saves the messages in a file named after the local part of the
5581 sender of the first message instead of (in
5583 and) taking a filename argument; the variable
5585 is inspected to decide on the actual storage location.
5589 (s) Takes a message list and a filename and appends each message in turn
5590 to the end of the file.
5591 If no filename is given, the
5593 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
5596 The filename in quotes, followed by the generated character count
5597 is echoed on the user's terminal.
5600 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
5601 the messages are marked for deletion.
5602 .Sx "Filename transformations"
5607 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
5612 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
5617 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
5622 Takes a message specification (list) and displays a header summary of
5623 all matching messages, as via
5625 This command is an alias of
5628 .Sx "Specifying messages" .
5632 Takes a message list and marks all messages as having been read.
5638 (se, \*(NQ uns) The latter commands will delete all given variables,
5639 the former, when used without arguments, will show all variables which
5640 are currently known to \*(UA; a more verbose listing will be produced if
5647 Otherwise the given variables (and arguments) are set or adjusted.
5648 Arguments are of the form
5650 (no space before or after
5654 if there is no value, i.e., a boolean variable.
5655 Quotation marks may be placed around any part of the assignment
5656 statement to quote blanks or tabs, e.g.,
5658 .Dl set indentprefix='->'
5660 If an argument begins with
5664 the effect is the same as invoking the
5666 command with the remaining part of the variable
5667 .Pf ( Ql unset save ) .
5671 that is known to map to an environment variable will automatically cause
5672 updates in the program environment (unsetting a variable in the
5673 environment requires corresponding system support) \(em use the command
5675 for further environmental control.
5680 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
5687 Apply shell quoting rules to the given raw-data arguments.
5691 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) ,
5692 The first argument specifies the operation:
5696 cause shell quoting to be applied to the remains of the line, and
5697 expanded away thereof, respectively.
5698 If the former is prefixed with a plus-sign, the quoted result will not
5699 be roundtrip enabled, and thus can be decoded only in the very same
5700 environment that was used to perform the encode; also see
5701 .Cd mle-quote-rndtrip .
5702 If the coding operation fails the error number
5705 .Va ^ERR Ns -CANCELED ,
5706 and the unmodified input is used as the result; the error number may
5707 change again due to output or result storage errors.
5711 (sh) Invokes an interactive version of the shell,
5712 and returns its exit status.
5716 .It Ic shortcut , unshortcut
5717 Without arguments the list of all currently defined shortcuts is
5718 shown, with one argument the expansion of the given shortcut.
5719 Otherwise all given arguments are treated as pairs of shortcuts and
5720 their expansions, creating new or changing already existing shortcuts,
5722 The latter command will remove all given shortcuts, the special name
5724 will remove all registered shortcuts.
5728 Shift the positional parameter stack (starting at
5730 by the given number (which must be an unsigned, positive, decimal),
5731 or 1 if no argument has been given.
5732 It is an error if the value exceeds the number of positional parameters.
5733 If the given number is 0, no action is performed, successfully.
5734 The stack as such can be managed via
5741 but performs neither MIME decoding nor decryption, so that the raw
5742 message text is shown.
5746 (si) Shows the size in characters of each message of the given
5751 \*(NQ Sleep for the specified number of seconds (and optionally
5752 milliseconds), by default interruptably.
5753 If a third argument is given the sleep will be uninterruptible,
5754 otherwise the error number
5758 if the sleep has been interrupted.
5759 The command will fail and the error number will be
5760 .Va ^ERR Ns -OVERFLOW
5761 if the given duration(s) overflow the time datatype, and
5763 if the given durations are no valid integers.
5768 .It Ic sort , unsort
5769 The latter command disables sorted or threaded mode, returns to normal
5770 message order and, if the
5773 displays a header summary.
5774 The former command shows the current sorting criterion when used without
5775 an argument, but creates a sorted representation of the current folder
5776 otherwise, and changes the
5778 command and the addressing modes such that they refer to messages in
5780 Message numbers are the same as in regular mode.
5784 a header summary in the new order is also displayed.
5785 Automatic folder sorting can be enabled by setting the
5787 variable, as in, e.g.,
5788 .Ql set autosort=thread .
5789 Possible sorting criterions are:
5792 .Bl -tag -compact -width "subject"
5794 Sort the messages by their
5796 field, that is by the time they were sent.
5798 Sort messages by the value of their
5800 field, that is by the address of the sender.
5803 variable is set, the sender's real name (if any) is used.
5805 Sort the messages by their size.
5807 \*(OP Sort the message by their spam score, as has been classified by
5810 Sort the messages by their message status.
5812 Sort the messages by their subject.
5814 Create a threaded display.
5816 Sort messages by the value of their
5818 field, that is by the address of the recipient.
5821 variable is set, the recipient's real name (if any) is used.
5827 \*(NQ (so) The source command reads commands from the given file.
5828 .Sx "Filename transformations"
5830 If the given expanded argument ends with a vertical bar
5832 then the argument will instead be interpreted as a shell command and
5833 \*(UA will read the output generated by it.
5834 Interpretation of commands read is stopped when an error is encountered.
5837 cannot be used from within macros that execute as
5838 .Va folder-hook Ns s
5841 i.e., it can only be called from macros that were
5846 \*(NQ The difference to
5848 (beside not supporting pipe syntax aka shell command input) is that
5849 this command will not generate an error nor warn if the given file
5850 argument cannot be opened successfully.
5854 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and clears their
5860 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and causes the
5862 to forget it has ever used them to train its Bayesian filter.
5863 Unless otherwise noted the
5865 flag of the message is inspected to chose whether a message shall be
5873 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and informs the Bayesian filter of the
5877 This also clears the
5879 flag of the messages in question.
5883 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and rates them using the configured
5884 .Va spam-interface ,
5885 without modifying the messages, but setting their
5887 flag as appropriate; because the spam rating headers are lost the rate
5888 will be forgotten once the mailbox is left.
5889 Refer to the manual section
5891 for the complete picture of spam handling in \*(UA.
5895 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and sets their
5901 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and informs the Bayesian filter of the
5907 flag of the messages in question.
5924 slot for white- and blacklisting header fields.
5928 (to) Takes a message list and types out the first
5930 lines of each message on the users' terminal.
5931 Unless a special selection has been established for the
5935 command, the only header fields that are displayed are
5946 It is possible to apply compression to what is displayed by setting
5948 Messages are decrypted and converted to the terminal character set
5953 (tou) Takes a message list and marks the messages for saving in the
5955 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
5957 \*(UA deviates from the POSIX standard with this command,
5960 command will display the following message instead of the current one.
5966 but also displays header fields which would not pass the
5968 selection, and all visualizable parts of MIME
5969 .Ql multipart/alternative
5974 (t) Takes a message list and types out each message on the users terminal.
5975 The display of message headers is selectable via
5977 For MIME multipart messages, all parts with a content type of
5979 all parts which have a registered MIME type handler (see
5980 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" )
5981 which produces plain text output, and all
5983 parts are shown, others are hidden except for their headers.
5984 Messages are decrypted and converted to the terminal character set
5988 can be used to display parts which are not displayable as plain text.
6032 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
6037 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
6042 Superseded by the multiplexer
6053 .It Ic unmlsubscribe
6064 Takes a message list and marks each message as not having been read.
6068 Superseded by the multiplexer
6073 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
6078 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
6101 Perform URL percent codec operations on the raw-data argument, rather
6102 according to RFC 3986.
6106 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) ,
6107 and manages the error number
6109 This is a character set agnostic and thus locale dependent operation,
6110 and it may decode bytes which are invalid in the current
6112 \*(ID This command does not about URLs beside that.
6114 The first argument specifies the operation:
6118 perform plain URL percent en- and decoding, respectively.
6122 perform a slightly modified operation which should be better for
6123 pathnames: it does not allow a tilde
6125 and will neither accept hyphen-minus
6129 as an initial character.
6130 The remains of the line form the URL data which is to be converted.
6131 If the coding operation fails the error number
6134 .Va ^ERR Ns -CANCELED ,
6135 and the unmodified input is used as the result; the error number may
6136 change again due to output or result storage errors.
6140 \*(NQ Edit the values of or create the given variable(s) in the
6142 Boolean variables cannot be edited, and variables can also not be
6148 \*(NQ This command produces the same output as the listing mode of
6152 ity adjustments, but only for the given variables.
6156 \*(OP Takes a message list and verifies each message.
6157 If a message is not a S/MIME signed message,
6158 verification will fail for it.
6159 The verification process checks if the message was signed using a valid
6161 if the message sender's email address matches one of those contained
6162 within the certificate,
6163 and if the message content has been altered.
6176 \*(NQ Evaluate arguments according to a given operator.
6177 This is a multiplexer command which can be used to perform signed 64-bit
6178 numeric calculations as well as byte string and string operations.
6179 It uses polish notation, i.e., the operator is the first argument and
6180 defines the number and type, and the meaning of the remaining arguments.
6181 An empty argument is replaced with a 0 if a number is expected.
6185 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) .
6188 The result that is shown in case of errors is always
6190 for usage errors and numeric operations, and the empty string for byte
6191 string and string operations;
6192 if the latter two fail to provide result data for
6194 errors, e.g., when a search operation failed, they also set the
6197 .Va ^ERR Ns -NODATA .
6198 Except when otherwise noted numeric arguments are parsed as signed 64-bit
6199 numbers, and errors will be reported in the error number
6201 as the numeric error
6202 .Va ^ERR Ns -RANGE .
6205 Numeric operations work on one or two signed 64-bit integers.
6206 One integer is expected by assignment (equals sign
6208 which does nothing but parsing the argument, thus detecting validity and
6209 possible overflow conditions, and unary not (tilde
6211 which creates the bitwise complement.
6212 Two integers are used by addition (plus sign
6214 subtraction (hyphen-minus
6216 multiplication (asterisk
6220 and modulo (percent sign
6222 as well as for the bitwise operators logical or (vertical bar
6225 bitwise and (ampersand
6228 bitwise xor (circumflex
6230 the bitwise signed left- and right shifts
6233 as well as for the unsigned right shift
6237 All numeric operators can be suffixed with a commercial at
6241 this will turn the operation into a saturated one, which means that
6242 overflow errors and division and modulo by zero are no longer reported
6243 via the exit status, but the result will linger at the minimum or
6244 maximum possible value, instead of overflowing (or trapping).
6245 This is true also for the argument parse step.
6246 For the bitwise shifts, the saturated maximum is 63.
6247 Any catched overflow will be reported via the error number
6250 .Va ^ERR Ns -OVERFLOW .
6253 Character set agnostic string functions have no notion of locale
6254 settings and character sets.
6257 which performs the usual
6258 .Sx "Filename transformations"
6259 on its argument, and
6261 which generates a random string of the given length, or of
6263 bytes (a constant from
6265 if the value 0 is given; the random string will be base64url encoded
6266 according to RFC 4648, and thus be usable as a (portable) filename.
6269 Byte string operations work on 8-bit bytes and have no notion of locale
6270 settings and character sets, effectively assuming ASCII data.
6271 Operations that take one argument are
6273 which queries the length of the given argument, and
6275 which calculates the Chris Torek hash of the given argument.
6278 Byte string operations with two or more arguments are
6280 which byte-searches in the first for the second argument, and shows the
6281 resulting 0-based offset shall it have been found,
6283 which is identical to
6285 but works case-insensitively according to the rules of the ASCII
6288 will show a substring of its first argument:
6289 the second argument is the 0-based starting offset, the optional third
6290 argument can be used to specify the length of the desired substring,
6291 by default the entire string is used;
6292 this operation tries to work around faulty arguments (set
6294 for error logs), but reports them via the error number
6297 .Va ^ERR Ns -OVERFLOW .
6300 String operations work, sufficient support provided, according to the
6302 locale and therefore with the user's locale encoding / character set.
6303 There is the one argument operation
6305 which (one-way) converts the argument to something safely printable on
6311 is a string operation that will try to match the first argument with the
6312 regular expression given as the second argument, as does
6314 but which is case-insensitive.
6315 If the optional third argument has been given then instead of showing
6316 the match offset a replacement operation is performed:
6317 the third argument is treated as if specified via dollar-single-quote
6319 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting" ) ,
6320 and any occurrence of a positional parameter, e.g.,
6322 is replaced by the corresponding match group of the regular expression.
6324 .Bd -literal -offset indent
6325 ? vexpr -@ +1 -9223372036854775808
6326 ? vput vexpr res ir bananarama (.*)NanA(.*) '\e${1}au\e$2'
6333 \*(NQ Manage the positional parameter stack (see
6337 If the first argument is
6339 then the positional parameter stack of the current context, or the
6340 global one, if there is none, is cleared.
6343 then the remaining arguments will be used to (re)create the stack,
6344 if the parameter stack size limit is excessed an
6345 .Va ^ERR Ns -OVERFLOW
6349 If the first argument is
6351 a round-trip capable representation of the stack contents is created,
6352 with each quoted parameter separated from each other with the first
6355 and followed by the first character of
6357 if that is not empyty and not identical to the first.
6358 If that results in no separation at all a
6364 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) .
6365 I.e., the subcommands
6369 can be used (in conjunction with
6371 to (re)create an argument stack from and to a single variable losslessly.
6373 .Bd -literal -offset indent
6374 ? vpospar set hey, "'you ", world!
6375 ? echo $#: <${1}><${2}><${3}>
6376 ? vput vpospar x quote
6378 ? echo $#: <${1}><${2}><${3}>
6379 ? eval vpospar set ${x}
6380 ? echo $#: <${1}><${2}><${3}>
6386 (v) Takes a message list and invokes the display editor on each message.
6387 Modified contents are discarded unless the
6389 variable is set, and are not used unless the mailbox can be written to
6390 and the editor returns a successful exit status.
6394 (w) For conventional messages the body without all headers is written.
6395 The original message is never marked for deletion in the originating
6397 The output is decrypted and converted to its native format as necessary.
6398 If the output file exists, the text is appended.
6399 If a message is in MIME multipart format its first part is written to
6400 the specified file as for conventional messages, handling of the remains
6401 depends on the execution mode.
6402 No special handling of compressed files is performed.
6404 In interactive mode the user is consecutively asked for the filenames of
6405 the processed parts.
6406 For convience saving of each part may be skipped by giving an empty
6407 value, the same result as writing it to
6409 Shell piping the part content by specifying a leading vertical bar
6411 character for the filename is supported.
6412 Other user input undergoes the usual
6413 .Sx "Filename transformations" ,
6414 and contents of the destination file are overwritten if the file
6417 \*(ID In non-interactive mode any part which does not specify a filename
6418 is ignored, and suspicious parts of filenames of the remaining parts are
6419 URL percent encoded (as via
6421 to prevent injection of malicious character sequences, resulting in
6422 a filename that will be written into the current directory.
6423 Existing files will not be overwritten, instead the part number or
6424 a dot are appended after a number sign
6426 to the name until file creation succeeds (or fails due to other
6431 \*(NQ This command works only inside of a
6433 ed macro: the sole difference to
6435 is that the new macro is executed in place of the current one, which
6436 will not regain control; all resources of the current macro will be
6437 released before control is given to the replacer.
6438 Note this implies that
6440 may become cleaned up if the teared down macro context is the outermost
6441 level of the cleanup stack.
6450 \*(NQ \*(UA presents message headers in
6452 fuls as described under the
6455 Without arguments this command scrolls to the next window of messages,
6456 likewise if the argument is
6460 scrolls to the last,
6462 scrolls to the first, and
6467 A number argument prefixed by
6471 indicates that the window is calculated in relation to the current
6472 position, and a number without a prefix specifies an absolute position.
6478 but scrolls to the next or previous window that contains at least one
6488 .\" .Sh COMMAND ESCAPES {{{
6489 .Sh "COMMAND ESCAPES"
6491 Here is a summary of the command escapes available in compose mode,
6492 which are used to perform special functions when composing messages.
6493 Command escapes are only recognized at the beginning of lines, and
6494 consist of a trigger (escape) and a command character.
6495 The actual escape character can be set via the internal variable
6497 it defaults to the tilde
6499 To avoid the possible \*(OPal history addition, an otherwise ignored
6500 (single) whitespace character can be placed after the escape character.
6503 Unless otherwise noted all compose mode commands ensure proper updates
6504 of the variables which represent the error number
6510 is set they will, unless stated otherwise, error out message compose
6511 mode if an operation fails.
6512 It is however possible to place the character hyphen-minus
6514 after (possible whitespace following) the escape character, which has an
6515 effect equivalent to the command modifier
6519 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ic BaNg"
6522 Insert the string of text in the message prefaced by a single
6524 (If the escape character has been changed,
6525 that character must be doubled instead.)
6528 .It Ic ~! Ar command
6529 Execute the indicated shell
6531 which follows, replacing unescaped exclamation marks with the previously
6532 executed command if the internal variable
6534 is set, then return to the message.
6538 Same effect as typing the end-of-file character.
6541 .It Ic ~: Ar \*(UA-command Ns \0or Ic ~_ Ar \*(UA-command
6542 Execute the given \*(UA command.
6543 Not all commands, however, are allowed.
6547 Write a summary of command escapes.
6550 .It Ic ~< Ar filename
6555 .It Ic ~<! Ar command
6557 is executed using the shell.
6558 Its standard output is inserted into the message.
6561 .It Ic ~@ Op Ar filename...
6562 Append or edit the list of attachments.
6563 Does not manage the error number
6569 instead if this is a concern).
6572 arguments is expected (see
6573 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting" ;
6574 any token-separating commas are ignored), to be
6575 interpreted as documented for the command line option
6577 with the message number exception as below.
6580 arguments the attachment list is edited, entry by entry;
6581 if a filename is left empty, that attachment is deleted from the list;
6582 once the end of the list is reached either new attachments may be
6583 entered or the session can be quit by committing an empty
6586 For each mode, if a given file name solely consists of the number sign
6588 followed by a valid message number of the currently active mailbox, then
6589 the given message is attached as a MIME
6591 part (note the number sign is the comment character and must be quoted).
6595 Inserts the string contained in the
6598 .Ql Ic ~i Ns \0Sign ) .
6603 ting the variable(s) instead!) The escape sequences tabulator
6611 Inserts the string contained in the
6614 .Ql Ic ~i Ns \0sign ) .
6619 ting the variable(s) instead!) The escape sequences tabulator
6626 .It Ic ~b Ar name ...
6627 Add the given names to the list of blind carbon copy recipients.
6630 .It Ic ~c Ar name ...
6631 Add the given names to the list of carbon copy recipients.
6635 Read the file specified by the
6637 variable into the message.
6641 Invoke the text editor on the message collected so far.
6642 After the editing session is finished,
6643 the user may continue appending text to the message.
6646 .It Ic ~F Ar messages
6647 Read the named messages into the message being sent, including all
6648 message headers and MIME parts.
6649 If no messages are specified, read in the current message.
6652 .It Ic ~f Ar messages
6653 Read the named messages into the message being sent.
6654 If no messages are specified, read in the current message.
6655 Strips down the list of header fields according to the
6657 white- and blacklist selection of
6659 For MIME multipart messages,
6660 only the first displayable part is included.
6664 Edit the message header fields
6669 by typing each one in turn and allowing the user to edit the field.
6670 The default values for these fields originate from the
6678 Edit the message header fields
6684 by typing each one in turn and allowing the user to edit the field.
6687 .It Ic ~i Ar variable
6688 Insert the value of the specified variable into the message,
6689 adding a newline character at the end.
6690 The message remains unaltered if the variable is unset or empty.
6695 ting the variable(s) instead!) The escape sequences tabulator
6702 .It Ic ~M Ar messages
6703 Read the named messages into the message being sent,
6706 If no messages are specified, read the current message.
6709 .It Ic ~m Ar messages
6710 Read the named messages into the message being sent,
6713 If no messages are specified, read the current message.
6714 Strips down the list of header fields according to the
6716 white- and blacklist selection of
6718 For MIME multipart messages,
6719 only the first displayable part is included.
6723 Display the message collected so far,
6724 prefaced by the message header fields
6725 and followed by the attachment list, if any.
6729 Abort the message being sent,
6730 copying it to the file specified by the
6737 .It Ic ~R Ar filename
6740 but indent each line that has been read by
6744 .It Ic ~r Ar filename Op Ar HERE-delimiter
6745 Read the named file, object to the usual
6746 .Sx "Filename transformations" ,
6747 into the message; if (the expanded)
6751 then standard input is used, e.g., for pasting purposes.
6752 Only in this latter mode
6754 may be given: if it is data will be read in until the given
6756 is seen on a line by itself, and encountering EOF is an error; the
6758 is a required argument in non-interactive mode; if it is single-quote
6759 quoted then the pasted content will not be expanded, \*(ID otherwise
6760 a future version of \*(UA may perform shell-style expansion on the content.
6764 Cause the named string to become the current subject field.
6765 Newline (NL) and carriage-return (CR) bytes are invalid and will be
6766 normalized to space (SP) characters.
6769 .It Ic ~t Ar name ...
6770 Add the given name(s) to the direct recipient list.
6773 .It Ic ~U Ar messages
6774 Read in the given / current message(s) excluding all headers, indented by
6778 .It Ic ~u Ar messages
6779 Read in the given / current message(s), excluding all headers.
6783 Invoke an alternate editor (defined by the
6785 environment variable) on the message collected so far.
6786 Usually, the alternate editor will be a screen editor.
6787 After the editor is quit,
6788 the user may resume appending text to the end of the message.
6791 .It Ic ~w Ar filename
6792 Write the message onto the named file, which is object to the usual
6793 .Sx "Filename transformations" .
6795 the message is appended to it.
6801 except that the message is not saved at all.
6804 .It Ic ~| Ar command
6805 Pipe the message through the specified filter command.
6806 If the command gives no output or terminates abnormally,
6807 retain the original text of the message.
6810 is often used as a rejustifying filter.
6814 .It Ic ~^ Ar cmd Op Ar subcmd Op Ar arg3 Op Ar arg4
6815 Low-level command meant for scripted message access, i.e., for
6816 .Va on-compose-splice-shell
6818 .Va on-compose-splice .
6819 The used protocol is likely subject to changes, and therefore the
6820 mentioned hooks receive the used protocol version as an initial line.
6821 In general the first field of a response line represents a status code
6822 which specifies whether a command was successful or not, whether result
6823 data is to be expected, and if, the format of the result data.
6824 Does not manage the error number
6828 because errors are reported via the protocol
6829 (hard errors like I/O failures cannot be handled).
6830 The status codes are:
6833 .Bl -tag -compact -width _210_
6835 Status ok; the remains of the line are the result.
6837 Status ok; the rest of the line is optionally used for more status.
6838 What follows are lines of result addresses, terminated by an empty line.
6839 The address lines consist of two fields, the first of which is the
6840 plain address, e.g.,
6842 separated by a single ASCII SP space from the second which contains the
6843 unstripped address, even if that is identical to the first field, e.g.,
6844 .Ql (Lovely) Bob <bob@exam.ple> .
6845 (All the input, including the empty line, must be consumed before
6846 further commands can be issued.)
6848 Status ok; the rest of the line is optionally used for more status.
6849 What follows are lines of furtherly unspecified string content,
6850 terminated by an empty line.
6852 including the empty line, must be consumed before further commands can
6855 Syntax error; invalid command.
6857 Syntax error in parameters or arguments.
6859 Error: an argument fails verification.
6860 For example an invalid address has been specified.
6862 Error: an otherwise valid argument is rendered invalid due to context.
6863 For example, a second address is added to a header which may consist of
6864 a single address only.
6868 If a command indicates failure then the message will have remained
6870 Most commands can fail with
6872 if required arguments are missing (false command usage).
6873 The following commands are supported, and, as usual, case-insensitive:
6876 .Bl -hang -width header
6878 This command allows listing, inspection, and editing of message headers.
6879 Header name case is not normalized, and case-insensitive comparison
6880 should be used when matching names.
6881 The second argument specifies the subcommand to apply, one of:
6883 .Bl -hang -width remove
6885 Without a third argument a list of all yet existing headers is given via
6887 this command is the default command of
6889 if no second argument has been given.
6890 A third argument restricts output to the given header only, which may
6893 if no such field is defined.
6896 Shows the content of the header given as the third argument.
6897 Dependent on the header type this may respond with
6901 any failure results in
6905 This will remove all instances of the header given as the third
6910 if no such header can be found.
6913 This will remove from the header given as the third argument the
6914 instance at the list position (counting from one!) given with the fourth
6919 if the list position argument is not a number or
6921 if no such header instance exists.
6924 Create a new or an additional instance of the header given in the third
6925 argument, with the header body content as given in the fourth argument
6926 (the remains of the line).
6929 if the third argument specifies a free-form header field name that is
6930 invalid, or if body content extraction fails to succeed,
6932 if any extracted address does not pass syntax and/or security checks, and
6934 to indicate prevention of excessing a single-instance header \(em note that
6936 can be appended to (a space separator will be added automatically first).
6939 is returned upon success, followed by the name of the header and the list
6940 position of the newly inserted instance.
6941 The list position is always 1 for single-instance header fields.
6942 All free-form header fields are managed in a single list.
6947 This command allows listing, removal and addition of message attachments.
6948 The second argument specifies the subcommand to apply, one of:
6950 .Bl -hang -width remove
6952 List all attachments via
6956 if no attachments exist.
6957 This command is the default command of
6959 if no second argument has been given.
6962 This will remove the attachment given as the third argument, and report
6966 if no such attachment can be found.
6967 If there exists any path component in the given argument, then an exact
6968 match of the path which has been used to create the attachment is used
6969 directly, but if only the basename of that path matches then all
6970 attachments are traversed to find an exact match first, and the removal
6971 occurs afterwards; if multiple basenames match, a
6974 Message attachments are treated as absolute pathnames.
6976 If no path component exists in the given argument, then all attachments
6977 will be searched for
6979 parameter matches as well as for matches of the basename of the path
6980 which has been used when the attachment has been created; multiple
6985 This will interpret the third argument as a number and remove the
6986 attachment at that list position (counting from one!), reporting
6990 if the argument is not a number or
6992 if no such attachment exists.
6995 Adds the attachment given as the third argument, specified exactly as
6996 documented for the command line option
6998 and supporting the message number extension as documented for
7002 upon success, with the index of the new attachment following,
7004 if the given file cannot be opened,
7006 if an on-the-fly performed character set conversion fails, otherwise
7008 is reported; this is also reported if character set conversion is
7009 requested but not available.
7012 This uses the same search mechanism as described for
7014 and prints any known attributes of the first found attachment via
7018 if no such attachment can be found.
7019 The attributes are written as lines of keyword and value tuples, the
7020 keyword being separated from the rest of the line with an ASCII SP space
7024 This uses the same search mechanism as described for
7026 and is otherwise identical to
7029 .It Cm attribute-set
7030 This uses the same search mechanism as described for
7032 and will assign the attribute given as the fourth argument, which is
7033 expected to be a value tuple of keyword and other data, separated by
7034 a ASCII SP space or TAB tabulator character.
7035 If the value part is empty, then the given attribute is removed, or
7036 reset to a default value if existence of the attribute is crucial.
7040 upon success, with the index of the found attachment following,
7042 for message attachments or if the given keyword is invalid, and
7044 if no such attachment can be found.
7045 The following keywords may be used (case-insensitively):
7047 .Bl -hang -compact -width ".Ql filename"
7049 Sets the filename of the MIME part, i.e., the name that is used for
7050 display and when (suggesting a name for) saving (purposes).
7051 .It Ql content-description
7052 Associate some descriptive information to the attachment's content, used
7053 in favour of the plain filename by some MUAs.
7055 May be used for uniquely identifying MIME entities in several contexts;
7056 this expects a special reference address format as defined in RFC 2045
7059 upon address content verification failure.
7061 Defines the media type/subtype of the part, which is managed
7062 automatically, but can be overwritten.
7063 .It Ql content-disposition
7064 Automatically set to the string
7068 .It Cm attribute-set-at
7069 This uses the same search mechanism as described for
7071 and is otherwise identical to
7081 .\" .Sh INTERNAL VARIABLES {{{
7082 .Sh "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
7084 Internal \*(UA variables are controlled via the
7088 commands; prefixing a variable name with the string
7092 has the same effect as using
7098 Creation or editing of variables can be performed in the
7103 will give more insight on the given variable(s), and
7105 when called without arguments, will show a listing of all variables.
7106 Both commands support a more
7109 Some well-known variables will also become inherited from the
7112 implicitly, others can be explicitly imported with the command
7114 and henceforth share said properties.
7117 Two different kind of internal variables exist.
7118 There are boolean variables, which can only be in one of the two states
7122 and value variables with a(n optional) string value.
7123 For the latter proper quoting is necessary upon assignment time, the
7124 introduction of the section
7126 documents the supported quoting rules.
7128 .Bd -literal -offset indent
7129 wysh set one=val\e 1 two="val 2" \e
7130 three='val "3"' four=$'val \e'4\e''; \e
7131 varshow one two three four; \e
7132 unset one two three four
7136 Dependent upon the actual option the string values will be interpreted
7137 as numbers, colour names, normal text etc., but there also exists
7138 a special kind of string value, the
7139 .Dq boolean string ,
7140 which must either be a decimal integer (in which case
7144 and any other value is true) or any of the (case-insensitive) strings
7150 for a false boolean and
7156 for a true boolean; a special kind of boolean string is the
7158 which is a boolean string that can optionally be prefixed with the
7159 (case-insensitive) term
7163 which causes prompting of the user in interactive mode, with the given
7164 boolean as the default value.
7166 .\" .Ss "Initial settings" {{{
7167 .\" (Keep in SYNC: ./nail.h:okeys, ./nail.rc, ./nail.1:"Initial settings")
7168 .Ss "Initial settings"
7170 The standard POSIX 2008/Cor 2-2016 mandates the following initial
7176 .Pf no Va autoprint ,
7190 .Pf no Va ignoreeof ,
7192 .Pf no Va keepsave ,
7194 .Pf no Va outfolder ,
7202 .Pf no Va sendwait ,
7211 Notes: \*(UA does not support the
7213 variable \(en use command line options or
7215 to pass options through to a
7217 And the default global
7219 file, which is loaded unless the
7221 (with according argument) or
7223 command line options have been used, or the
7224 .Ev MAILX_NO_SYSTEM_RC
7225 environment variable is set (see
7226 .Sx "Resource files" )
7227 bends those initial settings a bit, e.g., it sets the variables
7232 to name a few, establishes a default
7234 selection etc., and should thus be taken into account.
7237 .\" .Ss "Variables" {{{
7240 .Bl -tag -width ".It Va BaNg"
7244 \*(RO The exit status of the last command, or the
7249 This status has a meaning in the state machine: in conjunction with
7251 any non-0 exit status will cause a program exit, and in
7253 mode any error while loading (any of the) resource files will have the
7257 .Sx "Command modifiers" ,
7258 can be used to instruct the state machine to ignore errors.
7262 \*(RO The current error number
7263 .Pf ( Xr errno 3 ) ,
7264 which is set after an error occurred; it is also available via
7266 and the error name and documentation string can be queried via
7270 \*(ID This machinery is new and the error number is only really usable
7271 if a command explicitly states that it manages the variable
7273 for others errno will be used in case of errors, or
7275 if that is 0: it thus may or may not reflect the real error.
7276 The error number may be set with the command
7282 \*(RO This is a multiplexer variable which performs dynamic expansion of
7283 the requested state or condition, of which there are:
7286 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Va BaNg"
7290 .It Va ^ERR , ^ERRDOC , ^ERRNAME
7291 The number, documentation, and name of the current
7293 respectively, which is usually set after an error occurred.
7294 \*(ID This machinery is new and is usually reliable only if a command
7295 explicitly states that it manages the variable
7297 which is effectively identical to
7299 Each of those variables can be suffixed with a hyphen minus followed by
7300 a name or number, in which case the expansion refers to the given error.
7301 Note this is a direct mapping of (a subset of) the system error values:
7302 .Bd -literal -offset indent
7304 eval echo \e$1: \e$^ERR-$1: \e$^ERRNAME-$1: \e$^ERRDOC-$1
7305 vput vexpr i + "$1" 1
7317 \*(RO Expands all positional parameters (see
7319 separated by a space character.
7320 \*(ID The special semantics of the equally named special parameter of the
7322 are not yet supported.
7326 \*(RO Expands all positional parameters (see
7328 separated by a space character.
7329 If placed in double quotation marks, each positional parameter is
7330 properly quoted to expand to a single parameter again.
7334 \*(RO Expands to the number of positional parameters in decimal.
7338 \*(RO Inside the scope of a
7342 ed macro this expands to the name of the calling macro, or to the empty
7343 string if the macro is running from top-level.
7344 For the \*(OPal regular expression search and replace operator of
7346 this expands to the entire matching expression.
7347 It represents the program name in global context.
7351 \*(RO Access of the positional parameter stack.
7352 All further parameters can be accessed with this syntax, too, e.g.,
7355 etc.; positional parameters can be shifted off the stack by calling
7357 The parameter stack contains, e.g., the arguments of a
7361 d macro, the matching groups of the \*(OPal regular expression search
7362 and replace expression of
7364 and can be explicitly created or overwritten with the command
7369 \*(RO Is set to the active
7373 .It Va add-file-recipients
7374 \*(BO When file or pipe recipients have been specified,
7375 mention them in the corresponding address fields of the message instead
7376 of silently stripping them from their recipient list.
7377 By default such addressees are not mentioned.
7381 \*(BO Causes only the local part to be evaluated
7382 when comparing addresses.
7386 \*(RO Is set to the list of
7391 \*(BO Causes messages saved in the
7393 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
7395 to be appended to the end rather than prepended.
7396 This should always be set.
7400 \*(BO Causes \*(UA to prompt for the subject of each message sent.
7401 If the user responds with simply a newline,
7402 no subject field will be sent.
7406 \*(BO Causes the prompts for
7410 lists to appear after the message has been edited.
7414 \*(BO If set, \*(UA asks for files to attach at the end of each message,
7415 shall the list be found empty at that time.
7416 An empty line finalizes the list.
7420 \*(BO Causes the user to be prompted for carbon copy recipients
7421 (at the end of each message if
7425 are set) shall the list be found empty (at that time).
7426 An empty line finalizes the list.
7430 \*(BO Causes the user to be prompted for blind carbon copy
7431 recipients (at the end of each message if
7435 are set) shall the list be found empty (at that time).
7436 An empty line finalizes the list.
7440 \*(BO\*(OP Causes the user to be prompted if the message is to be
7441 signed at the end of each message.
7444 variable is ignored when this variable is set.
7448 \*(BO Alternative name for
7453 A sequence of characters to display in the
7457 as shown in the display of
7459 each for one type of messages (see
7460 .Sx "Message states" ) ,
7461 with the default being
7464 .Ql NU\ \ *HMFAT+\-$~
7467 variable is set, in the following order:
7469 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql _"
7491 start of a collapsed thread.
7493 an uncollapsed thread (TODO ignored for now).
7497 classified as possible spam.
7503 Specifies a list of recipients to which a blind carbon copy of each
7504 outgoing message will be sent automatically.
7508 Specifies a list of recipients to which a carbon copy of each outgoing
7509 message will be sent automatically.
7513 \*(BO Causes threads to be collapsed automatically when threaded mode
7520 \*(BO Enable automatic
7522 ing of a(n existing)
7528 commands, e.g., the message that becomes the new
7530 is shown automatically, as via
7537 \*(BO\*(OB Causes threaded mode (see the
7539 command) to be entered automatically when a folder is opened.
7541 .Ql autosort=thread .
7545 Causes sorted mode (see the
7547 command) to be entered automatically with the value of this variable as
7548 sorting method when a folder is opened, e.g.,
7549 .Ql set autosort=thread .
7553 \*(BO Enables the substitution of all not (reverse-solidus) escaped
7556 characters by the contents of the last executed command for the
7558 shell escape command and
7560 one of the compose mode
7561 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
7562 If this variable is not set no reverse solidus stripping is performed.
7565 .It Va batch-exit-on-error
7566 \*(OB\*(BO Predecessor of
7571 \*(OP Terminals generate multi-byte sequences for certain forms of
7572 input, for example for function and other special keys.
7573 Some terminals however do not write these multi-byte sequences as
7574 a whole, but byte-by-byte, and the latter is what \*(UA actually reads.
7575 This variable specifies the timeout in milliseconds that the MLE (see
7576 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
7577 waits for more bytes to arrive unless it considers a sequence
7583 \*(BO Sets some cosmetical features to traditional BSD style;
7584 has the same affect as setting
7586 and all other variables prefixed with
7588 it also changes the behaviour of
7590 (which does not exist in BSD).
7594 \*(BO Changes the letters shown in the first column of a header
7595 summary to traditional BSD style.
7599 \*(BO Changes the display of columns in a header summary to traditional
7604 \*(BO Changes some informational messages to traditional BSD style.
7610 field to appear immediately after the
7612 field in message headers and with the
7614 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
7618 .It Va build-os , build-osenv
7619 \*(RO The operating system \*(UA has been build for, usually taken from
7625 respectively, the former being lowercased.
7629 The value that should appear in the
7633 MIME header fields when no character set conversion of the message data
7635 This defaults to US-ASCII, and the chosen character set should be
7636 US-ASCII compatible.
7640 \*(OP The default 8-bit character set that is used as an implicit last
7641 member of the variable
7643 This defaults to UTF-8 if character set conversion capabilities are
7644 available, and to ISO-8859-1 otherwise, in which case the only supported
7647 and this variable is effectively ignored.
7648 Refer to the section
7649 .Sx "Character sets"
7650 for the complete picture of character set conversion in \*(UA.
7653 .It Va charset-unknown-8bit
7654 \*(OP RFC 1428 specifies conditions when internet mail gateways shall
7656 the content of a mail message by using a character set with the name
7658 Because of the unclassified nature of this character set \*(UA will not
7659 be capable to convert this character set to any other character set.
7660 If this variable is set any message part which uses the character set
7662 is assumed to really be in the character set given in the value,
7663 otherwise the (final) value of
7665 is used for this purpose.
7667 This variable will also be taken into account if a MIME type (see
7668 .Sx "The mime.types files" )
7669 of a MIME message part that uses the
7671 character set is forcefully treated as text.
7675 The default value for the
7680 .It Va colour-disable
7681 \*(BO\*(OP Forcefully disable usage of colours.
7682 Also see the section
7683 .Sx "Coloured display" .
7687 \*(BO\*(OP Whether colour shall be used for output that is paged through
7689 Note that pagers may need special command line options, e.g.,
7697 in order to support colours.
7698 Often doing manual adjustments is unnecessary since \*(UA may perform
7699 adjustments dependent on the value of the environment variable
7701 (see there for more).
7705 .It Va contact-mail , contact-web
7706 \*(RO Addresses for contact per email and web, respectively, e.g., for
7707 bug reports, suggestions, or help regarding \*(UA.
7708 The former can be used directly:
7709 .Ql ? eval mail $contact-mail .
7713 In a(n interactive) terminal session, then if this valued variable is
7714 set it will be used as a threshold to determine how many lines the given
7715 output has to span before it will be displayed via the configured
7719 can be forced by setting this to the value
7721 setting it without a value will deduce the current height of the
7722 terminal screen to compute the treshold (see
7727 \*(ID At the moment this uses the count of lines of the message in wire
7728 format, which, dependent on the
7730 of the message, is unrelated to the number of display lines.
7731 (The software is old and historically the relation was a given thing.)
7735 Define a set of custom headers to be injected into newly composed or
7736 forwarded messages; it is also possible to create custom headers in
7739 which can be automated by setting one of the hooks
7740 .Va on-compose-splice-shell
7742 .Va on-compose-splice .
7743 The value is interpreted as a comma-separated list of custom headers to
7744 be injected, to include commas in the header bodies escape them with
7746 \*(ID Overwriting of automatically managed headers is neither supported
7749 .Dl set customhdr='Hdr1: Body1-1\e, Body1-2, Hdr2: Body2'
7753 Controls the appearance of the
7755 date and time format specification of the
7757 variable, that is used, for example, when viewing the summary of
7759 If unset, then the local receiving date is used and displayed
7760 unformatted, otherwise the message sending
7762 It is possible to assign a
7764 format string and control formatting, but embedding newlines via the
7766 format is not supported, and will result in display errors.
7768 .Ql %Y-%m-%d %H:%M ,
7770 .Va datefield-markout-older .
7773 .It Va datefield-markout-older
7774 Only used in conjunction with
7776 Can be used to create a visible distinction of messages dated more than
7777 a day in the future, or older than six months, a concept comparable to the
7779 option of the POSIX utility
7781 If set to the empty string, then the plain month, day and year of the
7783 will be displayed, but a
7785 format string to control formatting can be assigned.
7791 \*(BO Enables debug messages and obsoletion warnings, disables the
7792 actual delivery of messages and also implies
7798 .It Va disposition-notification-send
7800 .Ql Disposition-Notification-To:
7801 header (RFC 3798) with the message.
7805 .\" TODO .It Va disposition-notification-send-HOST
7807 .\".Va disposition-notification-send
7808 .\" for SMTP accounts on a specific host.
7809 .\" TODO .It Va disposition-notification-send-USER@HOST
7811 .\".Va disposition-notification-send
7812 .\"for a specific account.
7816 \*(BO When dot is set, a period
7818 on a line by itself during message input in (interactive or batch
7820 compose mode will be treated as end-of-message (in addition to the
7821 normal end-of-file condition).
7822 This behaviour is implied in
7828 .It Va dotlock-ignore-error
7829 \*(BO\*(OP Synchronization of mailboxes which \*(UA treats as
7831 .Sx "primary system mailbox" Ns
7832 es (see, e.g., the notes on
7833 .Sx "Filename transformations" ,
7834 as well as the documentation of
7836 will be protected with so-called dotlock files\(emthe traditional mail
7837 spool file locking method\(emin addition to system file locking.
7838 Because \*(UA ships with a privilege-separated dotlock creation program
7839 that should always be able to create such a dotlock file there is no
7840 good reason to ignore dotlock file creation errors, and thus these are
7841 fatal unless this variable is set.
7845 \*(BO If this variable is set then the editor is started automatically
7846 when a message is composed in interactive mode, as if the
7848 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
7852 variable is implied for this automatically spawned editor session.
7856 \*(BO When a message is edited while being composed,
7857 its header is included in the editable text.
7867 fields are accepted within the header, other fields are ignored.
7871 \*(BO When entering interactive mode \*(UA normally writes
7872 .Dq \&No mail for user
7873 and exits immediately if a mailbox is empty or does not exist.
7874 If this variable is set \*(UA starts even with an empty or non-existent
7875 mailbox (the latter behaviour furtherly depends upon
7882 .Ql Content-Transfer-Encoding
7883 to use in outgoing text messages and message parts, where applicable.
7884 (7-bit clean text messages are sent as-is, without a transfer encoding.)
7887 .Bl -tag -compact -width "_%%_"
7890 8-bit transport effectively causes the raw data be passed through
7891 unchanged, but may cause problems when transferring mail messages over
7892 channels that are not ESMTP (RFC 1869) compliant.
7893 Also, several input data constructs are not allowed by the
7894 specifications and may cause a different transfer-encoding to be used.
7895 .It Ql quoted-printable
7897 Quoted-printable encoding is 7-bit clean and has the property that ASCII
7898 characters are passed through unchanged, so that an english message can
7899 be read as-is; it is also acceptible for other single-byte locales that
7900 share many characters with ASCII, like, e.g., ISO-8859-1.
7901 The encoding will cause a large overhead for messages in other character
7902 sets: e.g., it will require up to twelve (12) bytes to encode a single
7903 UTF-8 character of four (4) bytes.
7905 .Pf (Or\0 Ql b64 . )
7906 The default encoding, it is 7-bit clean and will always be used for
7908 This encoding has a constant input:output ratio of 3:4, regardless of
7909 the character set of the input data it will encode three bytes of input
7910 to four bytes of output.
7911 This transfer-encoding is not human readable without performing
7917 \*(BO Let each command with a non-0 exit status, including every
7921 s a non-0 status, cause a program exit unless prefixed by
7924 .Sx "Command modifiers" ) ;
7925 please refer to the variable
7927 for more on this topic.
7931 The first character of this value defines the escape character for
7932 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
7934 The default value is the character tilde
7936 If set to the empty string, command escapes are disabled.
7940 If not set then file and command pipeline targets are not allowed,
7941 and any such address will be filtered out, giving a warning message.
7942 If set without a value then all possible recipient address
7943 specifications will be accepted \(en see the section
7944 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode"
7946 To accept them, but only in interactive mode, or when tilde commands
7947 were enabled explicitly by using one of the command line options
7951 set this to the (case-insensitive) value
7953 (it actually acts like
7954 .Ql restrict,-all,+name,+addr ,
7955 so that care for ordering issues must be taken) .
7957 In fact the value is interpreted as a comma-separated list of values.
7960 then the existence of disallowed specifications is treated as a hard
7961 send error instead of only filtering them out.
7962 The remaining values specify whether a specific type of recipient
7963 address specification is allowed (optionally indicated by a plus sign
7965 prefix) or disallowed (prefixed with a hyphen-minus
7969 addresses all possible address specifications,
7973 command pipeline targets,
7975 plain user names and (MTA) aliases (\*(OB
7977 may be used as an alternative syntax to
7982 These kind of values are interpreted in the given order, so that
7983 .Ql restrict,\:fail,\:+file,\:-all,\:+addr
7984 will cause hard errors for any non-network address recipient address
7985 unless \*(UA is in interactive mode or has been started with the
7989 command line option; in the latter case(s) any address may be used, then.
7991 Historically invalid network addressees are silently stripped off.
7992 To change this and ensure that any encountered invalid email address
7993 instead causes a hard error, ensure the string
7995 is an entry in the above list.
7996 Setting this automatically enables network addressees
7997 (it actually acts like
7998 .Ql failinvaddr,+addr ,
7999 so that care for ordering issues must be taken) .
8003 Unless this variable is set additional
8005 (Mail-Transfer-Agent)
8006 arguments from the command line, as can be given after a
8008 separator, are ignored due to safety reasons.
8009 However, if set to the special (case-insensitive) value
8011 then the presence of additional MTA arguments is treated as a hard
8012 error that causes \*(UA to exit with failure status.
8013 A lesser strict variant is the otherwise identical
8015 which does accept such arguments in interactive mode, or if tilde
8016 commands were enabled explicitly by using one of the command line options
8023 \*(RO String giving a list of features \*(UA, preceded with a plus sign
8025 if the feature is available, and a hyphen-minus
8028 The output of the command
8030 will include this information.
8034 \*(BO This setting reverses the meanings of a set of reply commands,
8035 turning the lowercase variants, which by default address all recipients
8036 included in the header of a message
8037 .Pf ( Ic reply , respond , followup )
8038 into the uppercase variants, which by default address the sender only
8039 .Pf ( Ic Reply , Respond , Followup )
8042 .Ic replysender , respondsender , followupsender
8044 .Ic replyall , respondall , followupall
8045 are not affected by the current setting of
8050 The default path under which mailboxes are to be saved:
8051 file names that begin with the plus sign
8053 will have the plus sign replaced with the value of this variable if set,
8054 otherwise the plus sign will remain unchanged when doing
8055 .Sx "Filename transformations" ;
8058 for more on this topic.
8059 The value supports a subset of transformations itself, and if the
8060 non-empty value does not start with a solidus
8064 will be prefixed automatically.
8065 Once the actual value is evaluated first, the internal variable
8067 will be updated for caching purposes.
8071 This variable can be set to the name of a
8073 macro which will be called whenever a
8076 The macro will also be invoked when new mail arrives,
8077 but message lists for commands executed from the macro
8078 only include newly arrived messages then.
8080 are activated by default in a folder hook, causing the covered settings
8081 to be reverted once the folder is left again.
8084 Macro behaviour, including option localization, will change in v15.
8085 One should be aware of that and possibly embed version checks in the
8086 used resource file(s).
8089 .It Va folder-hook-FOLDER
8094 Unlike other folder specifications, the fully expanded name of a folder,
8095 without metacharacters, is used to avoid ambiguities.
8096 However, if the mailbox resides under
8100 specification is tried in addition, e.g., if
8104 (and thus relative to the user's home directory) then
8105 .Pa /home/usr1/mail/sent
8107 .Ql folder-hook-/home/usr1/mail/sent
8108 first, but then followed by
8109 .Ql folder-hook-+sent .
8112 .It Va folder-resolved
8113 \*(RO Set to the fully resolved path of
8115 once that evaluation has occurred; rather internal.
8119 \*(BO Controls whether a
8120 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
8121 header is generated when sending messages to known mailing lists.
8123 .Va followup-to-honour
8125 .Ic mlist , mlsubscribe , reply
8130 .It Va followup-to-honour
8132 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
8133 header is honoured when group-replying to a message via
8137 This is a quadoption; if set without a value it defaults to
8147 .It Va forward-as-attachment
8148 \*(BO Original messages are normally sent as inline text with the
8151 and only the first part of a multipart message is included.
8152 With this setting enabled messages are sent as unmodified MIME
8154 attachments with all of their parts included.
8158 The address (or a list of addresses) to put into the
8160 field of the message header, quoting RFC 5322:
8161 the author(s) of the message, that is, the mailbox(es) of the person(s)
8162 or system(s) responsible for the writing of the message.
8165 ing to messages these addresses are handled as if they were in the
8169 If the machine's hostname is not valid at the Internet (for example at
8170 a dialup machine) then either this variable or
8172 (\*(IN and with a defined SMTP protocol in
8175 adds even more fine-tuning capabilities),
8179 contains more than one address,
8182 variable is required (according to the standard RFC 5322).
8184 If a file-based MTA is used, then
8186 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
8188 can nonetheless be enforced to appear as the envelope sender address at
8189 the MTA protocol level (the RFC 5321 reverse-path), either by using the
8191 command line option (with an empty argument; see there for the complete
8192 picture on this topic), or by setting the internal variable
8193 .Va r-option-implicit .
8197 \*(BO When replying to or forwarding a message \*(UA normally removes
8198 the comment and name parts of email addresses.
8199 If this variable is set such stripping is not performed,
8200 and comments, names etc. are retained.
8204 The string to put before the text of a message with the
8208 .Va forward-as-attachment
8211 .Dq -------- Original Message --------
8212 if unset; No heading is put if it is set to the empty string.
8216 \*(BO Causes the header summary to be written at startup and after
8217 commands that affect the number of messages or the order of messages in
8222 mode a header summary will also be displayed on folder changes.
8223 The command line option
8231 A format string to use for the summary of
8233 similar to the ones used for
8236 Format specifiers in the given string start with a percent sign
8238 and may be followed by an optional decimal number indicating the field
8239 width \(em if that is negative, the field is to be left-aligned.
8240 Valid format specifiers are:
8243 .Bl -tag -compact -width "_%%_"
8245 A plain percent sign.
8248 a space character but for the current message
8250 for which it expands to
8254 a space character but for the current message
8256 for which it expands to
8259 \*(OP The spam score of the message, as has been classified via the
8262 Shows only a replacement character if there is no spam support.
8264 Message attribute character (status flag); the actual content can be
8268 The date found in the
8270 header of the message when
8272 is set (the default), otherwise the date when the message was received.
8273 Formatting can be controlled by assigning a
8278 The indenting level in threaded mode.
8280 The address of the message sender.
8282 The message thread tree structure.
8283 (Note that this format does not support a field width.)
8285 The number of lines of the message, if available.
8289 The number of octets (bytes) in the message, if available.
8291 Message subject (if any).
8293 Message subject (if any) in double quotes.
8295 Message recipient flags: is the addressee of the message a known or
8296 subscribed mailing list \(en see
8301 The position in threaded/sorted order.
8305 .Ql %>\&%a\&%m\ %-18f\ %16d\ %4l/%\-5o\ %i%-s ,
8307 .Ql %>\&%a\&%m\ %20-f\ \ %16d\ %3l/%\-5o\ %i%-S
8318 .It Va headline-bidi
8319 Bidirectional text requires special treatment when displaying headers,
8320 because numbers (in dates or for file sizes etc.) will not affect the
8321 current text direction, in effect resulting in ugly line layouts when
8322 arabic or other right-to-left text is to be displayed.
8323 On the other hand only a minority of terminals is capable to correctly
8324 handle direction changes, so that user interaction is necessary for
8326 Note that extended host system support is required nonetheless, e.g.,
8327 detection of the terminal character set is one precondition;
8328 and this feature only works in an Unicode (i.e., UTF-8) locale.
8330 In general setting this variable will cause \*(UA to encapsulate text
8331 fields that may occur when displaying
8333 (and some other fields, like dynamic expansions in
8335 with special Unicode control sequences;
8336 it is possible to fine-tune the terminal support level by assigning
8338 no value (or any value other than
8343 will make \*(UA assume that the terminal is capable to properly deal
8344 with Unicode version 6.3, in which case text is embedded in a pair of
8345 U+2068 (FIRST STRONG ISOLATE) and U+2069 (POP DIRECTIONAL ISOLATE)
8347 In addition no space on the line is reserved for these characters.
8349 Weaker support is chosen by using the value
8351 (Unicode 6.3, but reserve the room of two spaces for writing the control
8352 sequences onto the line).
8357 select Unicode 1.1 support (U+200E, LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK); the latter
8358 again reserves room for two spaces in addition.
8362 \*(OP If a line editor is available then this can be set to
8363 name the (expandable) path of the location of a permanent history file.
8368 .It Va history-gabby
8369 \*(BO\*(OP Add more entries to the history as is normally done.
8372 .It Va history-gabby-persist
8373 \*(BO\*(OP \*(UA's own MLE will not save the additional
8375 entries in persistent storage unless this variable is set.
8376 On the other hand it will not loose the knowledge of whether
8377 a persistent entry was gabby or not.
8383 \*(OP Setting this variable imposes a limit on the number of concurrent
8385 If set to the value 0 then no further history entries will be added, and
8386 loading and incorporation of the
8388 upon program startup can also be suppressed by doing this.
8389 Runtime changes will not be reflected, but will affect the number of
8390 entries saved to permanent storage.
8394 \*(BO This setting controls whether messages are held in the system
8396 and it is set by default.
8400 Use this string as hostname when expanding local addresses instead of
8401 the value obtained from
8405 It is used, e.g., in
8409 fields, as well as when generating
8411 MIME part related unique ID fields.
8412 Setting it to the empty string will cause the normal hostname to be
8413 used, but nonetheless enables creation of said ID fields.
8414 \*(IN in conjunction with the builtin SMTP
8417 also influences the results:
8418 one should produce some test messages with the desired combination of
8427 \*(BO\*(OP Can be used to turn off the automatic conversion of domain
8428 names according to the rules of IDNA (internationalized domain names
8430 Since the IDNA code assumes that domain names are specified with the
8432 character set, an UTF-8 locale charset is required to represent all
8433 possible international domain names (before conversion, that is).
8437 The input field separator that is used (\*(ID by some functions) to
8438 determine where to split input data.
8440 .Bl -tag -compact -width MMM
8442 Unsetting is treated as assigning the default value,
8445 If set to the empty value, no field splitting will be performed.
8447 If set to a non-empty value, all whitespace characters are extracted
8448 and assigned to the variable
8452 .Bl -tag -compact -width MMM
8455 will be ignored at the beginning and end of input.
8456 Diverging from POSIX shells default whitespace is removed in addition,
8457 which is owed to the entirely different line content extraction rules.
8459 Each occurrence of a character of
8461 will cause field-splitting, any adjacent
8463 characters will be skipped.
8468 \*(RO Automatically deduced from the whitespace characters in
8473 \*(BO Ignore interrupt signals from the terminal while entering
8474 messages; instead echo them as
8476 characters and discard the current line.
8480 \*(BO Ignore end-of-file conditions
8481 .Pf ( Ql control-D )
8482 in compose mode on message input and in interactive command input.
8483 If set an interactive command input session can only be left by
8484 explicitly using one of the commands
8488 and message input in compose mode can only be terminated by entering
8491 on a line by itself or by using the
8493 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" ;
8494 Setting this implies the behaviour that
8502 If this is set to a non-empty string it will specify the users
8504 .Sx "primary system mailbox" ,
8507 and the system-dependent default, and (thus) be used to replace
8510 .Sx "Filename transformations" ;
8513 for more on this topic.
8514 The value supports a subset of transformations itself.
8522 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
8525 option for indenting messages,
8526 in place of the normal tabulator character
8528 which is the default.
8529 Be sure to quote the value if it contains spaces or tabs.
8533 \*(BO If set, an empty
8535 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
8536 file is not removed.
8537 Note that, in conjunction with
8539 any empty file will be removed unless this variable is set.
8540 This may improve the interoperability with other mail user agents
8541 when using a common folder directory, and prevents malicious users
8542 from creating fake mailboxes in a world-writable spool directory.
8543 \*(ID Only local regular (MBOX) files are covered, Maildir or other
8544 mailbox types will never be removed, even if empty.
8547 .It Va keep-content-length
8548 \*(BO When (editing messages and) writing MBOX mailbox files \*(UA can
8553 header fields that some MUAs generate by setting this variable.
8554 Since \*(UA does neither use nor update these non-standardized header
8555 fields (which in itself shows one of their conceptual problems),
8556 stripping them should increase interoperability in between MUAs that
8557 work with with same mailbox files.
8558 Note that, if this is not set but
8559 .Va writebackedited ,
8560 as below, is, a possibly performed automatic stripping of these header
8561 fields already marks the message as being modified.
8565 \*(BO When a message is saved it is usually discarded from the
8566 originating folder when \*(UA is quit.
8567 This setting causes all saved message to be retained.
8570 .It Va line-editor-disable
8571 \*(BO Turn off any enhanced line editing capabilities (see
8572 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor"
8576 .It Va line-editor-no-defaults
8577 \*(BO\*(OP Do not establish any default key binding.
8581 Error log message prefix string
8582 .Pf ( Ql "\*(uA: " ) .
8585 .It Va mailbox-display
8586 \*(RO The name of the current mailbox
8588 possibly abbreviated for display purposes.
8591 .It Va mailbox-resolved
8592 \*(RO The fully resolved path of the current mailbox.
8595 .It Va mailx-extra-rc
8596 An additional startup file that is loaded as the last of the
8597 .Sx "Resource files" .
8598 Use this file for commands that are not understood by other POSIX
8600 implementations, i.e., mostly anything which is not covered by
8601 .Sx "Initial settings" .
8605 \*(BO When a message is replied to and this variable is set,
8606 it is marked as having been
8609 .Sx "Message states" .
8613 \*(BO When opening MBOX mailbox databases \*(UA by default uses tolerant
8614 POSIX rules for detecting message boundaries (so-called
8616 lines) due to compatibility reasons, instead of the stricter rules that
8617 have been standardized in RFC 4155.
8618 This behaviour can be switched to the stricter RFC 4155 rules by
8619 setting this variable.
8620 (This is never necessary for any message newly generated by \*(UA,
8621 it only applies to messages generated by buggy or malicious MUAs, or may
8622 occur in old MBOX databases: \*(UA itself will choose a proper
8626 lines cannot be misinterpreted as message boundaries.)
8628 This may temporarily be handy when \*(UA complains about invalid
8630 lines when opening a MBOX: in this case setting this variable and
8631 re-opening the mailbox in question may correct the result.
8632 If so, copying the entire mailbox to some other file, as in
8633 .Ql copy * SOME-FILE ,
8634 will perform proper, all-compatible
8636 quoting for all detected messages, resulting in a valid MBOX mailbox.
8637 Finally the variable can be unset again:
8638 .Bd -literal -offset indent
8640 localopts yes; wysh set mbox-rfc4155;\e
8641 wysh File "${1}"; eval copy * "${2}"
8643 call mboxfix /tmp/bad.mbox /tmp/good.mbox
8648 \*(BO Internal development variable.
8651 .It Va message-id-disable
8652 \*(BO By setting this variable the generation of
8654 can be completely suppressed, effectively leaving this task up to the
8656 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) or the SMTP server.
8657 (According to RFC 5321 a SMTP server is not required to add this
8658 field by itself, so it should be ensured that it accepts messages without
8660 This variable also affects automatic generation of
8665 .It Va message-inject-head
8666 A string to put at the beginning of each new message.
8667 The escape sequences tabulator
8674 .It Va message-inject-tail
8675 A string to put at the end of each new message.
8676 The escape sequences tabulator
8684 \*(BO Usually, when an
8686 expansion contains the sender, the sender is removed from the expansion.
8687 Setting this option suppresses these removals.
8692 option to be passed through to the
8694 (Mail-Transfer-Agent); though most of the modern MTAs no longer document
8695 this flag, no MTA is known which does not support it (for historical
8699 .It Va mime-allow-text-controls
8700 \*(BO When sending messages, each part of the message is MIME-inspected
8701 in order to classify the
8704 .Ql Content-Transfer-Encoding:
8707 that is required to send this part over mail transport, i.e.,
8708 a computation rather similar to what the
8710 command produces when used with the
8714 This classification however treats text files which are encoded in
8715 UTF-16 (seen for HTML files) and similar character sets as binary
8716 octet-streams, forcefully changing any
8721 .Ql application/octet-stream :
8722 If that actually happens a yet unset charset MIME parameter is set to
8724 effectively making it impossible for the receiving MUA to automatically
8725 interpret the contents of the part.
8727 If this variable is set, and the data was unambiguously identified as
8728 text data at first glance (by a
8732 file extension), then the original
8734 will not be overwritten.
8737 .It Va mime-alternative-favour-rich
8738 \*(BO If this variable is set then rich MIME alternative parts (e.g.,
8739 HTML) will be preferred in favour of included plain text versions when
8740 displaying messages, provided that a handler exists which produces
8741 output that can be (re)integrated into \*(UA's normal visual display.
8742 (E.g., at the time of this writing some newsletters ship their full
8743 content only in the rich HTML part, whereas the plain text part only
8744 contains topic subjects.)
8747 .It Va mime-counter-evidence
8750 field is used to decide how to handle MIME parts.
8751 Some MUAs, however, do not use
8752 .Sx "The mime.types files"
8754 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" )
8755 or a similar mechanism to correctly classify content, but specify an
8756 unspecific MIME type
8757 .Pf ( Ql application/octet-stream )
8758 even for plain text attachments.
8759 If this variable is set then \*(UA will try to re-classify such MIME
8760 message parts, if possible, for example via a possibly existing
8761 attachment filename.
8762 A non-empty value may also be given, in which case a number is expected,
8763 actually a carrier of bits.
8764 Creating the bit-carrying number is a simple addition:
8765 .Bd -literal -offset indent
8766 ? !echo Value should be set to $((2 + 4 + 8))
8767 Value should be set to 14
8770 .Bl -bullet -compact
8772 If bit two is set (2) then the detected
8774 will be carried along with the message and be used for deciding which
8775 MIME handler is to be used, for example;
8776 when displaying such a MIME part the part-info will indicate the
8777 overridden content-type by showing a plus sign
8780 If bit three is set (4) then the counter-evidence is always produced
8781 and a positive result will be used as the MIME type, even forcefully
8782 overriding the parts given MIME type.
8784 If bit four is set (8) then as a last resort the actual content of
8785 .Ql application/octet-stream
8786 parts will be inspected, so that data which looks like plain text can be
8791 .It Va mimetypes-load-control
8792 Can be used to control which of
8793 .Sx "The mime.types files"
8794 are loaded: if the letter
8796 is part of the option value, then the user's personal
8798 file will be loaded (if it exists); likewise the letter
8800 controls loading of the system wide
8801 .Pa /etc/mime.types ;
8802 directives found in the user file take precedence, letter matching is
8804 If this variable is not set \*(UA will try to load both files.
8805 Incorporation of the \*(UA-builtin MIME types cannot be suppressed,
8806 but they will be matched last (the order can be listed via
8809 More sources can be specified by using a different syntax: if the
8810 value string contains an equals sign
8812 then it is instead parsed as a comma-separated list of the described
8815 pairs; the given filenames will be expanded and loaded, and their
8816 content may use the extended syntax that is described in the section
8817 .Sx "The mime.types files" .
8818 Directives found in such files always take precedence (are prepended to
8819 the MIME type cache).
8824 To choose an alternate Mail-Transfer-Agent, set this option to either
8825 the full pathname of an executable (optionally prefixed with a
8827 protocol indicator), or \*(OPally a SMTP protocol URL, e.g., \*(IN
8829 .Dl smtps?://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
8832 .Ql [smtp://]server[:port] . )
8833 The default has been chosen at compie time.
8834 All supported data transfers are executed in child processes, which
8835 run asynchronously, and without supervision, unless either the
8840 If such a child receives a TERM signal, it will abort and
8847 For a file-based MTA it may be necessary to set
8849 in in order to choose the right target of a modern
8852 It will be passed command line arguments from several possible sources:
8855 if set, from the command line if given and the variable
8858 Argument processing of the MTA will be terminated with a
8863 The otherwise occurring implicit usage of the following MTA command
8864 line arguments can be disabled by setting the boolean variable
8865 .Va mta-no-default-arguments
8866 (which will also disable passing
8870 (for not treating a line with only a dot
8872 character as the end of input),
8880 variable is set); in conjunction with the
8882 command line option \*(UA will also (not) pass
8888 \*(OP \*(UA can send mail over SMTP network connections to a single
8889 defined SMTP smarthost, the access URL of which has to be assigned to
8891 To use this mode it is helpful to read
8892 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" .
8893 It may be necessary to set the
8895 variable in order to use a specific combination of
8900 with some mail providers.
8903 .Bl -bullet -compact
8905 The plain SMTP protocol (RFC 5321) that normally lives on the
8906 server port 25 and requires setting the
8907 .Va smtp-use-starttls
8908 variable to enter a SSL/TLS encrypted session state.
8909 Assign a value like \*(IN
8910 .Ql smtp://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
8912 .Ql smtp://server[:port] )
8913 to choose this protocol.
8915 The so-called SMTPS which is supposed to live on server port 465
8916 and is automatically SSL/TLS secured.
8917 Unfortunately it never became a standardized protocol and may thus not
8918 be supported by your hosts network service database
8919 \(en in fact the port number has already been reassigned to other
8922 SMTPS is nonetheless a commonly offered protocol and thus can be
8923 chosen by assigning a value like \*(IN
8924 .Ql smtps://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
8926 .Ql smtps://server[:port] ) ;
8927 due to the mentioned problems it is usually necessary to explicitly
8932 Finally there is the SUBMISSION protocol (RFC 6409), which usually
8933 lives on server port 587 and is practically identically to the SMTP
8934 protocol from \*(UA's point of view beside that; it requires setting the
8935 .Va smtp-use-starttls
8936 variable to enter a SSL/TLS secured session state.
8937 Assign a value like \*(IN
8938 .Ql submission://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
8940 .Ql submission://server[:port] ) .
8945 .It Va mta-arguments
8946 Arguments to pass through to a file-based
8948 can be given via this variable, which is parsed according to
8949 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting"
8950 into an array of arguments, and which will be joined onto MTA options
8951 from other sources, and then passed individually to the MTA:
8953 .Dl wysh set mta-arguments='-t -X \&"/tmp/my log\&"'
8956 .It Va mta-no-default-arguments
8957 \*(BO Unless this variable is set \*(UA will pass some well known
8958 standard command line options to a file-based
8960 (Mail-Transfer-Agent), see there for more.
8964 Many systems use a so-called
8966 environment to ensure compatibility with
8968 This works by inspecting the name that was used to invoke the mail
8970 If this variable is set then the mailwrapper (the program that is
8971 actually executed when calling the file-based
8973 will treat its contents as that name.
8978 .It Va netrc-lookup-USER@HOST , netrc-lookup-HOST , netrc-lookup
8979 \*(BO\*(IN\*(OP Used to control usage of the users
8981 file for lookup of account credentials, as documented in the section
8982 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup"
8986 .Sx "The .netrc file"
8987 documents the file format.
8999 then \*(UA will read the output of a shell pipe instead of the users
9001 file if this variable is set (to the desired shell command).
9002 This can be used to, e.g., store
9006 .Dl set netrc-pipe='gpg -qd ~/.netrc.pgp'
9010 If this variable has the value
9012 newly created local folders will be in Maildir instead of MBOX format.
9016 Checks for new mail in the current folder each time the prompt is shown.
9017 A Maildir folder must be re-scanned to determine if new mail has arrived.
9018 If this variable is set to the special value
9020 then a Maildir folder will not be rescanned completely, but only
9021 timestamp changes are detected.
9025 \*(BO Causes the filename given in the
9028 and the sender-based filenames for the
9032 commands to be interpreted relative to the directory given in the
9034 variable rather than to the current directory,
9035 unless it is set to an absolute pathname.
9038 .It Va on-compose-cleanup
9039 Macro hook which will be called after the message has been sent (or not,
9040 in case of failures), as the very last step before unrolling compose mode
9042 This hook is run even in case of fatal errors, and it is advisable to
9043 perform only absolutely necessary actions, like cleaning up
9046 For compose mode hooks that may affect the message content please see
9047 .Va on-compose-enter , on-compose-leave , on-compose-splice .
9048 \*(ID This hook exists only because
9049 .Ic alias , alternates , commandalias , shortcut ,
9050 to name a few, are currently not covered by
9052 or a similar mechanism: any changes applied in compose mode will
9053 continue to be in effect thereafter.
9057 .It Va on-compose-enter , on-compose-leave
9058 Macro hooks which will be called before compose mode is entered,
9059 and after composing has been finished (but before the
9061 is injected, etc.), respectively.
9063 are enabled for these hooks, causing any setting to be forgotten after
9064 the message has been sent;
9065 .Va on-compose-cleanup
9066 can be used to perform any other necessary cleanup.
9067 The following (read-only) variables will be set temporarily during
9068 execution of the macros to represent the according message headers, or
9069 the empty string for non-existent:
9071 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Va compose_subject"
9074 .It Va compose-sender
9076 .It Va compose-to , compose-cc , compose-bcc
9077 The list of receiver addresses as a space-separated list.
9078 .It Va compose-subject
9085 .It Va on-compose-splice-shell , on-compose-splice
9086 These hooks run once the normal compose mode is finished, but before the
9087 .Va on-compose-leave
9088 macro hook is called, the
9091 Both hooks will be executed in a subprocess, with their input and output
9092 connected to \*(UA such that they can act as if they would be an
9094 The difference in between them is that the former is a
9096 command, whereas the latter is a normal \*(UA macro, but which is
9097 restricted to a small set of commands (the
9101 will indicate said capability).
9103 are enabled for these hooks (in the parent process), causing any setting
9104 to be forgotten after the message has been sent;
9105 .Va on-compose-cleanup
9106 can be used to perform other cleanup as necessary.
9109 During execution of these hooks \*(UA will temporarily forget whether it
9110 has been started in interactive mode, (a restricted set of)
9111 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
9112 will always be available, and for guaranteed reproducibilities sake
9116 will be set to their defaults.
9117 The compose mode command
9119 has been especially designed for scriptability (via these hooks).
9120 The first line the hook will read on its standard input is the protocol
9121 version of said command escape, currently
9123 backward incompatible protocol changes have to be expected.
9126 Care must be taken to avoid deadlocks and other false control flow:
9127 if both involved processes wait for more input to happen at the
9128 same time, or one doesn't expect more input but the other is stuck
9129 waiting for consumption of its output, etc.
9130 There is no automatic synchronization of the hook: it will not be
9131 stopped automatically just because it, e.g., emits
9133 The hooks will however receive a termination signal if the parent enters
9135 \*(ID Protection against and interaction with signals is not yet given;
9136 it is likely that in the future these scripts will be placed in an
9137 isolated session, which is signalled in its entirety as necessary.
9139 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9140 wysh set on-compose-splice-shell=$'\e
9142 printf "hello $version! Headers: ";\e
9143 echo \e'~^header list\e';\e
9144 read status result;\e
9145 echo "status=$status result=$result";\e
9148 set on-compose-splice=ocsm
9151 echo Splice protocol version is $ver
9152 echo '~^h l'; read hl; vput vexpr es substring "${hl}" 0 1
9154 echoerr 'Cannot read header list'; echo '~x'; xit
9156 if [ "$hl" @i!@ ' cc' ]
9157 echo '~^h i cc Diet is your <mirr.or>'; read es;\e
9158 vput vexpr es substring "${es}" 0 1
9160 echoerr 'Cannot insert Cc: header'; echo '~x'
9169 \*(BO If set, each message feed through the command given for
9171 is followed by a formfeed character
9175 .It Va password-USER@HOST , password-HOST , password
9176 \*(IN Variable chain that sets a password, which is used in case none has
9177 been given in the protocol and account-specific URL;
9178 as a last resort \*(UA will ask for a password on the user's terminal if
9179 the authentication method requires a password.
9180 Specifying passwords in a startup file is generally a security risk;
9181 the file should be readable by the invoking user only.
9183 .It Va password-USER@HOST
9184 \*(OU (see the chain above for \*(IN)
9185 Set the password for
9189 If no such variable is defined for a host,
9190 the user will be asked for a password on standard input.
9191 Specifying passwords in a startup file is generally a security risk;
9192 the file should be readable by the invoking user only.
9196 \*(BO Send messages to the
9198 command without performing MIME and character set conversions.
9202 .It Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE
9203 When a MIME message part of type
9205 (case-insensitive) is displayed or quoted,
9206 its text is filtered through the value of this variable interpreted as
9208 Note that only parts which can be displayed inline as plain text (see
9210 are displayed unless otherwise noted, other MIME parts will only be
9211 considered by and for the command
9213 The special value commercial at
9215 forces interpretation of the message part as plain text, e.g.,
9216 .Ql set pipe-application/xml=@
9217 will henceforth display XML
9219 (The same could also be achieved by adding a MIME type marker with the
9222 And \*(OPally MIME type handlers may be defined via
9223 .Sx "The Mailcap files"
9224 \(em these directives,
9226 has already been used, should be referred to for further documentation.
9231 can in fact be used as a trigger character to adjust usage and behaviour
9232 of a following shell command specification more thoroughly by appending
9233 more special characters which refer to further mailcap directives, e.g.,
9234 the following hypothetical command specification could be used:
9236 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9237 set pipe-X/Y='@!++=@vim ${MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}'
9241 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql __"
9243 The command produces plain text to be integrated in \*(UAs output:
9247 If set the handler will not be invoked when a message is to be quoted,
9248 but only when it will be displayed:
9249 .Cd x-mailx-noquote .
9252 Run the command asynchronously, i.e., without blocking \*(UA:
9256 The command must be run on an interactive terminal, \*(UA will
9257 temporarily release the terminal to it:
9261 Request creation of a zero-sized temporary file, the absolute pathname
9262 of which will be made accessible via the environment variable
9263 .Ev MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY :
9264 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile .
9265 If given twice then the file will be unlinked automatically by \*(UA
9266 when the command loop is entered again at latest:
9267 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink .
9270 Normally the MIME part content is passed to the handler via standard
9271 input; if this flag is set then the data will instead be written into
9272 .Ev MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY
9273 .Pf ( Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill ) ,
9274 the creation of which is implied; note however that in order to cause
9275 deletion of the temporary file you still have to use two plus signs
9280 To avoid ambiguities with normal shell command content you can use
9281 another commercial at to forcefully terminate interpretation of
9282 remaining characters.
9283 (Any character not in this list will have the same effect.)
9287 Some information about the MIME part to be displayed is embedded into
9288 the environment of the shell command:
9291 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ev _AIL__ILENAME__ENERATED"
9293 .It Ev MAILX_CONTENT
9294 The MIME content-type of the part, if known, the empty string otherwise.
9297 .It Ev MAILX_CONTENT_EVIDENCE
9299 .Va mime-counter-evidence
9300 includes the carry-around-bit (2), then this will be set to the detected
9301 MIME content-type; not only then identical to
9302 .Ev \&\&MAILX_CONTENT
9306 .It Ev MAILX_FILENAME
9307 The filename, if any is set, the empty string otherwise.
9310 .It Ev MAILX_FILENAME_GENERATED
9314 .It Ev MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY
9315 If temporary file creation has been requested through the command prefix
9316 this variable will be set and contain the absolute pathname of the
9322 .It Va pipe-EXTENSION
9323 This is identical to
9324 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE
9327 (normalized to lowercase using character mappings of the ASCII charset)
9328 names a file extension, e.g.,
9330 Handlers registered using this method take precedence.
9333 .It Va pop3-auth-USER@HOST , pop3-auth-HOST , pop3-auth
9334 \*(OP\*(IN Variable chain that sets the POP3 authentication method.
9335 The only possible value as of now is
9337 which is thus the default.
9340 .Mx Va pop3-bulk-load
9341 .It Va pop3-bulk-load-USER@HOST , pop3-bulk-load-HOST , pop3-bulk-load
9342 \*(BO\*(OP When accessing a POP3 server \*(UA loads the headers of
9343 the messages, and only requests the message bodies on user request.
9344 For the POP3 protocol this means that the message headers will be
9346 If this variable is set then \*(UA will download only complete messages
9347 from the given POP3 server(s) instead.
9349 .Mx Va pop3-keepalive
9350 .It Va pop3-keepalive-USER@HOST , pop3-keepalive-HOST , pop3-keepalive
9351 \*(OP POP3 servers close the connection after a period of inactivity;
9352 the standard requires this to be at least 10 minutes,
9353 but practical experience may vary.
9354 Setting this variable to a numeric value greater than
9358 command to be sent each value seconds if no other operation is performed.
9361 .It Va pop3-no-apop-USER@HOST , pop3-no-apop-HOST , pop3-no-apop
9362 \*(BO\*(OP Unless this variable is set the
9364 authentication method will be used when connecting to a POP3 server that
9368 is that the password is not sent in clear text over the wire and that
9369 only a single packet is sent for the user/password tuple.
9371 .Va pop3-no-apop-HOST
9374 .Mx Va pop3-use-starttls
9375 .It Va pop3-use-starttls-USER@HOST , pop3-use-starttls-HOST , pop3-use-starttls
9376 \*(BO\*(OP Causes \*(UA to issue a
9378 command to make an unencrypted POP3 session SSL/TLS encrypted.
9379 This functionality is not supported by all servers,
9380 and is not used if the session is already encrypted by the POP3S method.
9382 .Va pop3-use-starttls-HOST
9388 \*(BO This flag enables POSIX mode, which changes behaviour of \*(UA
9389 where that deviates from standardized behaviour.
9390 It will be set implicitly before the
9391 .Sx "Resource files"
9392 are loaded if the environment variable
9394 is set, and adjusting any of those two will be reflected by the other
9396 The following behaviour is covered and enforced by this mechanism:
9399 .Bl -bullet -compact
9401 In non-interactive mode, any error encountered while loading resource
9402 files during program startup will cause a program exit, whereas in
9403 interactive mode such errors will stop loading of the currently loaded
9404 (stack of) file(s, i.e., recursively).
9405 These exits can be circumvented on a per-command base by using
9408 .Sx "Command modifiers" ,
9409 for each command which shall be allowed to fail.
9414 implies the behaviour described by
9420 is extended to cover any empty mailbox, not only empty
9422 .Sx "primary system mailbox" Ns
9423 es: they will be removed when they are left in empty state otherwise.
9426 Upon changing the active
9430 will be displayed even if
9437 .It Va print-alternatives
9438 \*(BO When a MIME message part of type
9439 .Ql multipart/alternative
9440 is displayed and it contains a subpart of type
9442 other parts are normally discarded.
9443 Setting this variable causes all subparts to be displayed,
9444 just as if the surrounding part was of type
9445 .Ql multipart/mixed .
9449 The string used as a prompt in interactive mode.
9450 Whenever the variable is evaluated the value is expanded as via
9451 dollar-single-quote expansion (see
9452 .Sx "Shell-style argument quoting" ) .
9453 This (post-assignment, i.e., second) expansion can be used to embed
9454 status information, for example
9459 .Va mailbox-display .
9461 In order to embed characters which should not be counted when
9462 calculating the visual width of the resulting string, enclose the
9463 characters of interest in a pair of reverse solidus escaped brackets:
9465 a slot for coloured prompts is also available with the \*(OPal command
9467 Prompting may be prevented by setting this to the null string
9469 .Ql set noprompt ) .
9473 This string is used for secondary prompts, but is otherwise identical to
9480 \*(BO Suppresses the printing of the version when first invoked.
9484 If set, \*(UA starts a replying message with the original message
9485 prefixed by the value of the variable
9487 Normally, a heading consisting of
9488 .Dq Fromheaderfield wrote:
9489 is put before the quotation.
9494 variable, this heading is omitted.
9497 is assigned, only the headers selected by the
9500 selection are put above the message body,
9503 acts like an automatic
9505 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
9509 is assigned, all headers are put above the message body and all MIME
9510 parts are included, making
9512 act like an automatic
9515 .Va quote-as-attachment .
9518 .It Va quote-as-attachment
9519 \*(BO Add the original message in its entirety as a
9521 MIME attachment when replying to a message.
9522 Note this works regardless of the setting of
9527 \*(OP Can be set in addition to
9529 Setting this turns on a more fancy quotation algorithm in that leading
9530 quotation characters are compressed and overlong lines are folded.
9532 can be set to either one or two (space separated) numeric values,
9533 which are interpreted as the maximum (goal) and the minimum line length,
9534 respectively, in a spirit rather equal to the
9536 program, but line-, not paragraph-based.
9537 If not set explicitly the minimum will reflect the goal algorithmically.
9538 The goal cannot be smaller than the length of
9540 plus some additional pad.
9541 Necessary adjustments take place silently.
9544 .It Va r-option-implicit
9545 \*(BO Setting this option evaluates the contents of
9547 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
9549 and passes the results onto the used (file-based) MTA as described for the
9551 option (empty argument case).
9554 .It Va recipients-in-cc
9561 are by default merged into the new
9563 If this variable is set, only the original
9567 the rest is merged into
9572 Unless this variable is defined, no copies of outgoing mail will be saved.
9573 If defined it gives the pathname, subject to the usual
9574 .Sx "Filename transformations" ,
9575 of a folder where all new, replied-to or forwarded messages are saved:
9576 when saving to this folder fails the message is not sent, but instead
9580 The standard defines that relative (fully expanded) paths are to be
9581 interpreted relative to the current directory
9583 to force interpretation relative to
9586 needs to be set in addition.
9590 \*(BO If this variable is set the meaning of
9592 will be extended to cover messages which target only file and pipe
9595 These address types will not appear in recipient lists unless
9596 .Va add-file-recipients
9600 .It Va record-resent
9601 \*(BO If this variable is set the meaning of
9603 will be extended to also cover the
9610 .It Va reply-in-same-charset
9611 \*(BO If this variable is set \*(UA first tries to use the same
9612 character set of the original message for replies.
9613 If this fails, the mechanism described in
9614 .Sx "Character sets"
9615 is evaluated as usual.
9618 .It Va reply-strings
9619 Can be set to a comma-separated list of (case-insensitive according to
9620 ASCII rules) strings which shall be recognized in addition to the
9623 reply message indicators \(en builtin are
9625 which is mandated by RFC 5322, as well as the german
9630 which often has been seen in the wild;
9631 I.e., the separating colon has to be specified explicitly.
9635 A list of addresses to put into the
9637 field of the message header.
9638 Members of this list are handled as if they were in the
9643 .It Va reply-to-honour
9646 header is honoured when replying to a message via
9650 This is a quadoption; if set without a value it defaults to
9654 .It Va rfc822-body-from_
9655 \*(BO This variable can be used to force displaying a so-called
9657 line for messages that are embedded into an envelope mail via the
9659 MIME mechanism, for more visual convenience.
9663 \*(BO Enable saving of (partial) messages in
9665 upon interrupt or delivery error.
9669 The number of lines that represents a
9678 line display and scrolling via
9680 If this variable is not set \*(UA falls back to a calculation based upon
9681 the detected terminal window size and the baud rate: the faster the
9682 terminal, the more will be shown.
9683 Overall screen dimensions and pager usage is influenced by the
9684 environment variables
9692 .It Va searchheaders
9693 \*(BO Expand message-list specifiers in the form
9695 to all messages containing the substring
9699 The string search is case insensitive.
9703 \*(OP A comma-separated list of character set names that can be used in
9704 outgoing internet mail.
9705 The value of the variable
9707 is automatically appended to this list of character sets.
9708 If no character set conversion capabilities are compiled into \*(UA then
9709 the only supported charset is
9712 .Va sendcharsets-else-ttycharset
9713 and refer to the section
9714 .Sx "Character sets"
9715 for the complete picture of character set conversion in \*(UA.
9718 .It Va sendcharsets-else-ttycharset
9719 \*(BO\*(OP If this variable is set, but
9721 is not, then \*(UA acts as if
9723 had been set to the value of the variable
9725 In effect this combination passes through the message data in the
9726 character set of the current locale (given that
9728 has not been set manually), i.e., without converting it to the
9730 fallback character set.
9731 Thus, mail message text will be in ISO-8859-1 encoding when send from
9732 within a ISO-8859-1 locale, and in UTF-8 encoding when send from within
9734 If no character set conversion capabilities are available in \*(UA then
9735 the only supported character set is
9740 An address that is put into the
9742 field of outgoing messages, quoting RFC 5322: the mailbox of the agent
9743 responsible for the actual transmission of the message.
9744 This field should normally not be used unless the
9746 field contains more than one address, on which case it is required.
9749 address is handled as if it were in the
9753 .Va r-option-implicit .
9757 \*(OB Predecessor of
9761 .It Va sendmail-arguments
9762 \*(OB Predecessor of
9766 .It Va sendmail-no-default-arguments
9767 \*(OB\*(BO Predecessor of
9768 .Va mta-no-default-arguments .
9771 .It Va sendmail-progname
9772 \*(OB Predecessor of
9777 \*(BO When sending a message wait until the
9779 (including the builtin SMTP one) exits before accepting further commands.
9781 with this variable set errors reported by the MTA will be recognizable!
9782 If the MTA returns a non-zero exit status,
9783 the exit status of \*(UA will also be non-zero.
9787 \*(BO This setting causes \*(UA to start at the last message
9788 instead of the first one when opening a mail folder.
9792 \*(BO Causes \*(UA to use the sender's real name instead of the plain
9793 address in the header field summary and in message specifications.
9797 \*(BO Causes the recipient of the message to be shown in the header
9798 summary if the message was sent by the user.
9802 The string to expand
9805 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" ) .
9809 The string to expand
9812 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" ) .
9816 Must correspond to the name of a readable file if set.
9817 The file's content is then appended to each singlepart message
9818 and to the first part of each multipart message.
9819 Be warned that there is no possibility to edit the signature for an
9823 .It Va skipemptybody
9824 \*(BO If an outgoing message does not contain any text in its first or
9825 only message part, do not send it but discard it silently (see also the
9831 .It Va smime-ca-dir , smime-ca-file
9832 \*(OP Specify the location of trusted CA certificates in PEM (Privacy
9833 Enhanced Mail) format as a directory and a file, respectively, for the
9834 purpose of verification of S/MIME signed messages.
9835 It is possible to set both, the file will be loaded immediately, the
9836 directory will be searched whenever no match has yet been found.
9837 The set of CA certificates which are built into the SSL/TLS library can
9838 be explicitly turned off by setting
9839 .Va smime-ca-no-defaults ,
9840 and further fine-tuning is possible via
9841 .Va smime-ca-flags .
9844 .It Va smime-ca-flags
9845 \*(OP Can be used to fine-tune behaviour of the X509 CA certificate
9846 storage, and the certificate verification that is used.
9847 The actual values and their meanings are documented for
9851 .It Va smime-ca-no-defaults
9852 \*(BO\*(OP Do not load the default CA locations that are built into the
9853 used to SSL/TLS library to verify S/MIME signed messages.
9856 .It Va smime-cipher-USER@HOST , smime-cipher
9857 \*(OP Specifies the cipher to use when generating S/MIME encrypted
9858 messages (for the specified account).
9859 RFC 5751 mandates a default of
9862 Possible values are (case-insensitive and) in decreasing cipher strength:
9870 (DES EDE3 CBC, 168 bits; default if
9872 is not available) and
9876 The actually available cipher algorithms depend on the cryptographic
9877 library that \*(UA uses.
9878 \*(OP Support for more cipher algorithms may be available through
9879 dynamic loading via, e.g.,
9880 .Xr EVP_get_cipherbyname 3
9881 (OpenSSL) if \*(UA has been compiled to support this.
9884 .It Va smime-crl-dir
9885 \*(OP Specifies a directory that contains files with CRLs in PEM format
9886 to use when verifying S/MIME messages.
9889 .It Va smime-crl-file
9890 \*(OP Specifies a file that contains a CRL in PEM format to use when
9891 verifying S/MIME messages.
9894 .It Va smime-encrypt-USER@HOST
9895 \*(OP If this variable is set, messages send to the given receiver are
9896 encrypted before sending.
9897 The value of the variable must be set to the name of a file that
9898 contains a certificate in PEM format.
9900 If a message is sent to multiple recipients,
9901 each of them for whom a corresponding variable is set will receive an
9902 individually encrypted message;
9903 other recipients will continue to receive the message in plain text
9905 .Va smime-force-encryption
9907 It is recommended to sign encrypted messages, i.e., to also set the
9912 .It Va smime-force-encryption
9913 \*(BO\*(OP Causes \*(UA to refuse sending unencrypted messages.
9917 \*(BO\*(OP S/MIME sign outgoing messages with the user's private key
9918 and include the user's certificate as a MIME attachment.
9919 Signing a message enables a recipient to verify that the sender used
9920 a valid certificate,
9921 that the email addresses in the certificate match those in the message
9922 header and that the message content has not been altered.
9923 It does not change the message text,
9924 and people will be able to read the message as usual.
9926 .Va smime-sign-cert , smime-sign-include-certs
9928 .Va smime-sign-message-digest .
9930 .Mx Va smime-sign-cert
9931 .It Va smime-sign-cert-USER@HOST , smime-sign-cert
9932 \*(OP Points to a file in PEM format.
9933 For the purpose of signing and decryption this file needs to contain the
9934 user's private key, followed by his certificate.
9938 is always derived from the value of
9940 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
9942 For the purpose of encryption the recipient's public encryption key
9943 (certificate) is expected; the command
9945 can be used to save certificates of signed messages (the section
9946 .Sx "Signed and encrypted messages with S/MIME"
9947 gives some details).
9948 This mode of operation is usually driven by the specialized form.
9950 When decrypting messages the account is derived from the recipient
9955 of the message, which are searched for addresses for which such
9957 \*(UA always uses the first address that matches,
9958 so if the same message is sent to more than one of the user's addresses
9959 using different encryption keys, decryption might fail.
9961 For signing and decryption purposes it is possible to use encrypted
9962 keys, and the pseudo-host(s)
9963 .Ql USER@HOST.smime-cert-key
9966 .Ql USER@HOST.smime-cert-cert
9967 for the certificate stored in the same file)
9968 will be used for performing any necessary password lookup,
9969 therefore the lookup can be automatized via the mechanisms described in
9970 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" .
9971 For example, the hypothetical address
9973 could be driven with a private key / certificate pair path defined in
9974 .Va \&\&smime-sign-cert-bob@exam.ple ,
9975 and needed passwords would then be looked up via the pseudo hosts
9976 .Ql bob@exam.ple.smime-cert-key
9978 .Ql bob@exam.ple.smime-cert-cert ) .
9979 To include intermediate certificates, use
9980 .Va smime-sign-include-certs .
9982 .Mx Va smime-sign-include-certs
9983 .It Va smime-sign-include-certs-USER@HOST , smime-sign-include-certs
9984 \*(OP If used, this is supposed to a consist of a comma-separated list
9985 of files, each of which containing a single certificate in PEM format to
9986 be included in the S/MIME message in addition to the
9989 This can be used to include intermediate certificates of the certificate
9990 authority, in order to allow the receiver's S/MIME implementation to
9991 perform a verification of the entire certificate chain, starting from
9992 a local root certificate, over the intermediate certificates, down to the
9993 .Va smime-sign-cert .
9994 Even though top level certificates may also be included in the chain,
9995 they won't be used for the verification on the receiver's side.
9997 For the purpose of the mechanisms involved here,
9999 refers to the content of the internal variable
10001 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
10004 .Ql USER@HOST.smime-include-certs
10005 will be used for performing password lookups for these certificates,
10006 shall they have been given one, therefore the lookup can be automatized
10007 via the mechanisms described in
10008 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" .
10010 .Mx Va smime-sign-message-digest
10011 .It Va smime-sign-message-digest-USER@HOST , smime-sign-message-digest
10012 \*(OP Specifies the message digest to use when signing S/MIME messages.
10013 RFC 5751 mandates a default of
10015 Possible values are (case-insensitive and) in decreasing cipher strength:
10023 The actually available message digest algorithms depend on the
10024 cryptographic library that \*(UA uses.
10025 \*(OP Support for more message digest algorithms may be available
10026 through dynamic loading via, e.g.,
10027 .Xr EVP_get_digestbyname 3
10028 (OpenSSL) if \*(UA has been compiled to support this.
10029 Remember that for this
10031 refers to the variable
10033 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
10038 \*(OB\*(OP To use the builtin SMTP transport, specify a SMTP URL in
10040 \*(ID For compatibility reasons a set
10042 is used in preference of
10046 .It Va smtp-auth-USER@HOST , smtp-auth-HOST , smtp-auth
10047 \*(OP Variable chain that controls the SMTP
10049 authentication method, possible values are
10055 as well as the \*(OPal methods
10061 method does not need any user credentials,
10063 requires a user name and all other methods require a user name and
10071 .Va smtp-auth-password
10073 .Va smtp-auth-user ) .
10078 .Va smtp-auth-USER@HOST :
10079 may override dependent on sender address in the variable
10082 .It Va smtp-auth-password
10083 \*(OP\*(OU Sets the global fallback password for SMTP authentication.
10084 If the authentication method requires a password, but neither
10085 .Va smtp-auth-password
10087 .Va smtp-auth-password-USER@HOST
10089 \*(UA will ask for a password on the user's terminal.
10091 .It Va smtp-auth-password-USER@HOST
10093 .Va smtp-auth-password
10094 for specific values of sender addresses, dependent upon the variable
10097 .It Va smtp-auth-user
10098 \*(OP\*(OU Sets the global fallback user name for SMTP authentication.
10099 If the authentication method requires a user name, but neither
10102 .Va smtp-auth-user-USER@HOST
10104 \*(UA will ask for a user name on the user's terminal.
10106 .It Va smtp-auth-user-USER@HOST
10109 for specific values of sender addresses, dependent upon the variable
10113 .It Va smtp-hostname
10114 \*(OP\*(IN Normally \*(UA uses the variable
10116 to derive the necessary
10118 information in order to issue a
10125 can be used to use the
10127 from the SMTP account
10134 from the content of this variable (or, if that is the empty string,
10136 or the local hostname as a last resort).
10137 This often allows using an address that is itself valid but hosted by
10138 a provider other than which (in
10140 is about to send the message.
10141 Setting this variable also influences generated
10147 .Mx Va smtp-use-starttls
10148 .It Va smtp-use-starttls-USER@HOST , smtp-use-starttls-HOST , smtp-use-starttls
10149 \*(BO\*(OP Causes \*(UA to issue a
10151 command to make an SMTP
10153 session SSL/TLS encrypted, i.e., to enable transport layer security.
10157 .It Va spam-interface
10158 \*(OP In order to use any of the spam-related commands (like, e.g.,
10160 the desired spam interface must be defined by setting this variable.
10161 Please refer to the manual section
10162 .Sx "Handling spam"
10163 for the complete picture of spam handling in \*(UA.
10164 All or none of the following interfaces may be available:
10166 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ql _ilte_"
10172 .Pf ( Lk http://spamassassin.apache.org SpamAssassin )
10174 Different to the generic filter interface \*(UA will automatically add
10175 the correct arguments for a given command and has the necessary
10176 knowledge to parse the program's output.
10177 A default value for
10179 will have been compiled into the \*(UA binary if
10183 during compilation.
10184 Shall it be necessary to define a specific connection type (rather than
10185 using a configuration file for that), the variable
10186 .Va spamc-arguments
10187 can be used as in, e.g.,
10188 .Ql -d server.example.com -p 783 .
10189 It is also possible to specify a per-user configuration via
10191 Note that this interface does not inspect the
10193 flag of a message for the command
10197 generic spam filter support via freely configurable hooks.
10198 This interface is meant for programs like
10200 and requires according behaviour in respect to the hooks' exit
10201 status for at least the command
10204 meaning a message is spam,
10208 for unsure and any other return value indicating a hard error);
10209 since the hooks can include shell code snippets diverting behaviour
10210 can be intercepted as necessary.
10212 .Va spamfilter-ham , spamfilter-noham , spamfilter-nospam , \
10215 .Va spamfilter-spam ;
10217 .Sx "Handling spam"
10218 contains examples for some programs.
10219 The process environment of the hooks will have the variable
10220 .Ev MAILX_FILENAME_GENERATED
10222 Note that spam score support for
10224 is not supported unless the \*(OPtional regular expression support is
10226 .Va spamfilter-rate-scanscore
10232 .It Va spam-maxsize
10233 \*(OP Messages that exceed this size will not be passed through to the
10235 .Va spam-interface .
10236 If unset or 0, the default of 420000 bytes is used.
10239 .It Va spamc-command
10240 \*(OP The path to the
10244 .Va spam-interface .
10245 Note that the path is not expanded, but used
10247 A fallback path will have been compiled into the \*(UA binary if the
10248 executable had been found during compilation.
10251 .It Va spamc-arguments
10252 \*(OP Even though \*(UA deals with most arguments for the
10255 automatically, it may at least sometimes be desirable to specify
10256 connection-related ones via this variable, e.g.,
10257 .Ql -d server.example.com -p 783 .
10261 \*(OP Specify a username for per-user configuration files for the
10263 .Va spam-interface .
10264 If this is set to the empty string then \*(UA will use the name of the
10273 .It Va spamfilter-ham , spamfilter-noham , \
10274 spamfilter-nospam , spamfilter-rate , spamfilter-spam
10275 \*(OP Command and argument hooks for the
10277 .Va spam-interface .
10279 .Sx "Handling spam"
10280 contains examples for some programs.
10283 .It Va spamfilter-rate-scanscore
10284 \*(OP Because of the generic nature of the
10287 spam scores are not supported for it by default, but if the \*(OPnal
10288 regular expression support is available then setting this variable can
10289 be used to overcome this restriction.
10290 It is interpreted as follows: first a number (digits) is parsed that
10291 must be followed by a semicolon
10293 and an extended regular expression.
10294 Then the latter is used to parse the first output line of the
10295 .Va spamfilter-rate
10296 hook, and, in case the evaluation is successful, the group that has been
10297 specified via the number is interpreted as a floating point scan score.
10301 .It Va ssl-ca-dir , ssl-ca-file
10302 \*(OP Specify the location of trusted CA certificates in PEM (Privacy
10303 Enhanced Mail) format as a directory and a file, respectively, for the
10304 purpose of verification of SSL/TLS server certificates.
10305 It is possible to set both, the file will be loaded immediately, the
10306 directory will be searched whenever no match has yet been found.
10307 The set of CA certificates which are built into the SSL/TLS library can
10308 be explicitly turned off by setting
10309 .Va ssl-ca-no-defaults ,
10310 and further fine-tuning is possible via
10313 .Xr SSL_CTX_load_verify_locations 3
10314 for more information.
10318 .It Va ssl-ca-flags
10319 \*(OP Can be used to fine-tune behaviour of the X509 CA certificate
10320 storage, and the certificate verification that is used (also see
10322 The value is expected to consist of a comma-separated list of
10323 configuration directives, with any intervening whitespace being ignored.
10324 The directives directly map to flags that can be passed to
10325 .Xr X509_STORE_set_flags 3 ,
10326 which are usually defined in a file
10327 .Pa openssl/x509_vfy.h ,
10328 and the availability of which depends on the used SSL/TLS library
10329 version: a directive without mapping is ignored (error log subject to
10331 Directives currently understood (case-insensitively) include:
10334 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Cd BaNg"
10335 .It Cd no-alt-chains
10336 If the initial chain is not trusted, do not attempt to build an
10338 Setting this flag will make OpenSSL certificate verification match that
10339 of older OpenSSL versions, before automatic building and checking of
10340 alternative chains has been implemented; also see
10341 .Cd trusted-first .
10342 .It Cd no-check-time
10343 Do not check certificate/CRL validity against current time.
10344 .It Cd partial-chain
10345 By default partial, incomplete chains which cannot be verified up to the
10346 chain top, a self-signed root certificate, will not verify.
10347 With this flag set, a chain succeeds to verify if at least one signing
10348 certificate of the chain is in any of the configured trusted stores of
10350 The OpenSSL manual page
10351 .Xr SSL_CTX_load_verify_locations 3
10352 gives some advise how to manage your own trusted store of CA certificates.
10354 Disable workarounds for broken certificates.
10355 .It Cd trusted-first
10356 Try building a chain using issuers in the trusted store first to avoid
10357 problems with server-sent legacy intermediate certificates.
10358 Newer versions of OpenSSL support alternative chain checking and enable
10359 it by default, resulting in the same behaviour; also see
10360 .Cd no-alt-chains .
10365 .It Va ssl-ca-no-defaults
10366 \*(BO\*(OP Do not load the default CA locations that are built into the
10367 used to SSL/TLS library to verify SSL/TLS server certificates.
10370 .It Va ssl-cert-USER@HOST , ssl-cert-HOST , ssl-cert
10371 \*(OP Variable chain that sets the file name for a SSL/TLS client
10372 certificate required by some servers.
10373 This is a direct interface to the
10377 function of the OpenSSL library, if available.
10379 .Mx Va ssl-cipher-list
10380 .It Va ssl-cipher-list-USER@HOST , ssl-cipher-list-HOST , ssl-cipher-list
10381 \*(OP Specifies a list of ciphers for SSL/TLS connections.
10382 This is a direct interface to the
10386 function of the OpenSSL library, if available; see
10389 .Xr SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list 3
10390 for more information.
10391 By default \*(UA does not set a list of ciphers, in effect using a
10393 specific cipher (protocol standards ship with a list of acceptable
10394 ciphers), possibly cramped to what the actually used SSL/TLS library
10395 supports \(en the manual section
10396 .Sx "An example configuration"
10397 also contains a SSL/TLS use case.
10400 .It Va ssl-config-file
10401 \*(OP If this variable is set \*(UA will call
10402 .Xr CONF_modules_load_file 3
10403 to allow OpenSSL to be configured according to the host system wide
10405 If a non-empty value is given then this will be used to specify the
10406 configuration file to be used instead of the global OpenSSL default;
10407 note that in this case it is an error if the file cannot be loaded.
10408 The application name will always be passed as
10412 .It Va ssl-curves-USER@HOST , ssl-curves-HOST , ssl-curves
10413 \*(OP Specifies a list of supported curves for SSL/TLS connections.
10414 This is a direct interface to the
10418 function of the OpenSSL library, if available; see
10419 .Xr SSL_CTX_set1_curves_list 3
10420 for more information.
10421 By default \*(UA does not set a list of curves.
10425 .It Va ssl-crl-dir , ssl-crl-file
10426 \*(OP Specify a directory / a file, respectively that contains a CRL in
10427 PEM format to use when verifying SSL/TLS server certificates.
10430 .It Va ssl-key-USER@HOST , ssl-key-HOST , ssl-key
10431 \*(OP Variable chain that sets the file name for the private key of
10432 a SSL/TLS client certificate.
10433 If unset, the name of the certificate file is used.
10434 The file is expected to be in PEM format.
10435 This is a direct interface to the
10439 function of the OpenSSL library, if available.
10442 .It Va ssl-method-USER@HOST , ssl-method-HOST , ssl-method
10443 \*(OB\*(OP Please use the newer and more flexible
10445 instead: if both values are set,
10447 will take precedence!
10448 Can be set to the following values, the actually used
10450 specification to which it is mapped is shown in parenthesis:
10452 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, TLSv1.2 ) ,
10454 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, TLSv1.1 ) ,
10456 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, TLSv1 )
10459 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, SSLv3 ) ;
10464 and thus includes the SSLv3 protocol.
10465 Note that SSLv2 is no longer supported at all.
10467 .Mx Va ssl-protocol
10468 .It Va ssl-protocol-USER@HOST , ssl-protocol-HOST , ssl-protocol
10469 \*(OP Specify the used SSL/TLS protocol.
10470 This is a direct interface to the
10474 function of the OpenSSL library, if available;
10475 otherwise an \*(UA internal parser is used which understands the
10476 following subset of (case-insensitive) command strings:
10482 as well as the special value
10484 Multiple specifications may be given via a comma-separated list which
10485 ignores any whitespace.
10488 plus sign prefix will enable a protocol, a
10490 hyphen-minus prefix will disable it, so that
10492 will enable only the TLSv1.2 protocol.
10494 It depends upon the used TLS/SSL library which protocols are actually
10495 supported and which protocols are used if
10497 is not set, but note that SSLv2 is no longer supported at all and
10499 Especially for older protocols explicitly securing
10500 .Va ssl-cipher-list
10501 may be worthwile, see
10502 .Sx "An example configuration" .
10505 .It Va ssl-rand-egd
10506 \*(OP Gives the pathname to an entropy daemon socket, see
10508 Not all SSL/TLS libraries support this.
10511 .It Va ssl-rand-file
10512 \*(OP Gives the filename to a file with random entropy data, see
10513 .Xr RAND_load_file 3 .
10514 If this variable is not set, or set to the empty string, or if the
10515 .Sx "Filename transformations"
10517 .Xr RAND_file_name 3
10518 will be used to create the filename if, and only if,
10520 documents that the SSL PRNG is not yet sufficiently seeded.
10521 If \*(UA successfully seeded the SSL PRNG then it will update the file
10522 .Pf ( Xr RAND_write_file 3 ) .
10523 This variable is only used if
10525 is not set (or not supported by the SSL/TLS library).
10528 .It Va ssl-verify-USER@HOST , ssl-verify-HOST , ssl-verify
10529 \*(OP Variable chain that sets the action to be performed if an error
10530 occurs during SSL/TLS server certificate validation against the
10531 specified or default trust stores
10534 or the SSL/TLS library builtin defaults (unless usage disallowed via
10535 .Va ssl-ca-no-defaults ) ,
10536 and as fine-tuned via
10538 Valid (case-insensitive) values are
10540 (fail and close connection immediately),
10542 (ask whether to continue on standard input),
10544 (show a warning and continue),
10546 (do not perform validation).
10552 If only set without an assigned value, then this setting inhibits the
10558 header fields that include obvious references to \*(UA.
10559 There are two pitfalls associated with this:
10560 First, the message id of outgoing messages is not known anymore.
10561 Second, an expert may still use the remaining information in the header
10562 to track down the originating mail user agent.
10563 If set to the value
10569 suppression does not occur.
10574 (\*(OP) This specifies a comma-separated list of
10579 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" ,
10580 escape commas with reverse solidus) to be used to overwrite or define
10582 Note that this variable will only be queried once at program startup and
10583 can thus only be specified in resource files or on the command line.
10586 String capabilities form
10588 pairs and are expected unless noted otherwise.
10589 Numerics have to be notated as
10591 where the number is expected in normal decimal notation.
10592 Finally, booleans do not have any value but indicate a true or false
10593 state simply by being defined or not; this indeed means that \*(UA
10594 does not support undefining an existing boolean.
10595 String capability values will undergo some expansions before use:
10596 for one notations like
10599 .Ql control-LETTER ,
10600 and for clarification purposes
10602 can be used to specify
10604 (the control notation
10606 could lead to misreadings when a left bracket follows, which it does for
10607 the standard CSI sequence);
10608 finally three letter octal sequences, as in
10611 To specify that a terminal supports 256-colours, and to define sequences
10612 that home the cursor and produce an audible bell, one might write:
10614 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10615 set termcap='Co#256,home=\eE[H,bel=^G'
10619 The following terminal capabilities are or may be meaningful for the
10620 operation of the builtin line editor or \*(UA in general:
10623 .Bl -tag -compact -width yay
10625 .It Cd colors Ns \0or Cd Co
10627 numeric capability specifying the maximum number of colours.
10628 Note that \*(UA does not actually care about the terminal beside that,
10629 but always emits ANSI / ISO 6429 escape sequences.
10632 .It Cd rmcup Ns \0or Cd te Ns \0/ Cd smcup Ns \0or Cd ti
10635 .Cd enter_ca_mode ,
10636 respectively: exit and enter the alternative screen
10638 effectively turning \*(UA into a fullscreen application.
10639 To disable that, set (at least) one to the empty string.
10641 .It Cd smkx Ns \0or Cd ks Ns \0/ Cd rmkx Ns \0or Cd ke
10645 respectively: enable and disable the keypad.
10646 This is always enabled if available, because it seems even keyboards
10647 without keypads generate other key codes for, e.g., cursor keys in that
10648 case, and only if enabled we see the codes that we are interested in.
10650 .It Cd ed Ns \0or Cd cd
10654 .It Cd clear Ns \0or Cd cl
10656 clear the screen and home cursor.
10657 (Will be simulated via
10662 .It Cd home Ns \0or Cd ho
10667 .It Cd el Ns \0or Cd ce
10669 clear to the end of line.
10670 (Will be simulated via
10672 plus repetitions of space characters.)
10674 .It Cd hpa Ns \0or Cd ch
10675 .Cd column_address :
10676 move the cursor (to the given column parameter) in the current row.
10677 (Will be simulated via
10683 .Cd carriage_return :
10684 move to the first column in the current row.
10685 The default builtin fallback is
10688 .It Cd cub1 Ns \0or Cd le
10690 move the cursor left one space (non-destructively).
10691 The default builtin fallback is
10694 .It Cd cuf1 Ns \0or Cd nd
10696 move the cursor right one space (non-destructively).
10697 The default builtin fallback is
10699 which is used by most terminals.
10707 Many more capabilities which describe key-sequences are documented for
10711 .It Va termcap-disable
10712 \*(OP Disable any interaction with a terminal control library.
10713 If set only some generic fallback builtins and possibly the content of
10715 describe the terminal to \*(UA.
10717 that this variable will only be queried once at program startup and can
10718 thus only be specified in resource files or on the command line.
10722 If defined, gives the number of lines of a message to be displayed
10725 if unset, the first five lines are printed, if set to 0 the variable
10728 If the value is negative then its absolute value will be used for
10729 unsigned right shifting (see
10737 \*(BO If set then the
10739 command series will strip adjacent empty lines and quotations.
10743 The character set of the terminal \*(UA operates on,
10744 and the one and only supported character set that \*(UA can use if no
10745 character set conversion capabilities have been compiled into it,
10746 in which case it defaults to ISO-8859-1 unless it can deduce a value
10749 locale environment.
10750 It defaults to UTF-8 if conversion is available.
10751 Refer to the section
10752 .Sx "Character sets"
10753 for the complete picture about character sets.
10756 .It Va typescript-mode
10757 \*(BO A special multiplex variable that disables all variables and
10758 settings which result in behaviour that interferes with running \*(UA in
10761 .Va colour-disable ,
10762 .Va line-editor-disable
10763 and (before startup completed only)
10764 .Va termcap-disable .
10765 Unsetting it does not restore the former state of the covered settings.
10769 For a safety-by-default policy \*(UA sets its process
10773 but this variable can be used to override that:
10774 set it to an empty value to do not change the (current) setting,
10775 otherwise the process file mode creation mask is updated to the new value.
10776 Child processes inherit the process file mode creation mask.
10779 .It Va user-HOST , user
10780 \*(IN Variable chain that sets a global fallback user name, which is
10781 used in case none has been given in the protocol and account-specific
10783 This variable defaults to the name of the user who runs \*(UA.
10787 \*(BO Setting this enables upward compatibility with \*(UA
10788 version 15.0 in respect to which configuration options are available and
10789 how they are handled.
10790 This manual uses \*(IN and \*(OU to refer to the new and the old way of
10791 doing things, respectively.
10795 \*(BO This setting, also controllable via the command line option
10797 causes \*(UA to be more verbose, e.g., it will display obsoletion
10798 warnings and SSL/TLS certificate chains.
10799 Even though marked \*(BO this option may be set twice in order to
10800 increase the level of verbosity even more, in which case even details of
10801 the actual message delivery and protocol conversations are shown.
10804 is sufficient to disable verbosity as such.
10811 .It Va version , version-date , version-major , version-minor , version-update
10812 \*(RO \*(UA version information: the first variable contains a string
10813 containing the complete version identification, the latter three contain
10814 only digits: the major, minor and update version numbers.
10815 The date is in ISO 8601 notation.
10816 The output of the command
10818 will include this information.
10821 .It Va writebackedited
10822 If this variable is set messages modified using the
10826 commands are written back to the current folder when it is quit;
10827 it is only honoured for writable folders in MBOX format, though.
10828 Note that the editor will be pointed to the raw message content in that
10829 case, i.e., neither MIME decoding nor decryption will have been
10830 performed, and proper RFC 4155
10832 quoting of newly added or edited content is also left as an excercise to
10835 .\" }}} (Variables)
10836 .\" }}} (INTERNAL VARIABLES)
10839 .\" .Sh ENVIRONMENT {{{
10843 .Dq environment variable
10844 should be considered an indication that these variables are either
10845 standardized as vivid parts of process environments, or that they are
10846 commonly found in there.
10847 The process environment is inherited from the
10849 once \*(UA is started, and unless otherwise explicitly noted handling of
10850 the following variables transparently integrates into that of the
10851 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
10852 from \*(UA's point of view.
10853 This means that, e.g., they can be managed via
10857 causing automatic program environment updates (to be inherited by
10858 newly created child processes).
10861 In order to transparently integrate other environment variables equally
10862 they need to be imported (linked) with the command
10864 This command can also be used to set and unset non-integrated
10865 environment variables from scratch, sufficient system support provided.
10866 The following example, applicable to a POSIX shell, sets the
10868 environment variable for \*(UA only, and beforehand exports the
10870 in order to affect any further processing in the running shell:
10872 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10873 $ EDITOR="vim -u ${HOME}/.vimrc"
10875 $ COLUMNS=80 \*(uA -R
10878 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ev BaNg"
10881 The user's preferred width in column positions for the terminal screen
10883 Queried and used once on program startup, actively managed for child
10884 processes and the MLE (see
10885 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
10886 in interactive mode thereafter.
10887 Ignored in non-interactive mode, which always uses 80 columns.
10891 The name of the (mailbox)
10893 to use for saving aborted messages if
10895 is set; this defaults to
10902 is set no output will be generated, otherwise the contents of the file
10907 Pathname of the text editor to use in the
10911 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
10912 A default editor is used if this value is not defined.
10916 The user's home directory.
10917 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment.
10924 .It Ev LANG , LC_ALL , LC_COLLATE , LC_CTYPE , LC_MESSAGES
10928 .Sx "Character sets" .
10932 The user's preferred number of lines on a page or the vertical screen
10933 or window size in lines.
10934 Queried and used once on program startup, actively managed for child
10935 processes in interactive mode thereafter.
10936 Ignored in non-interactive mode, which always uses 24 lines.
10940 Pathname of the directory lister to use in the
10942 command when operating on local mailboxes.
10945 (path search through
10950 Upon startup \*(UA will actively ensure that this variable refers to the
10951 name of the user who runs \*(UA, in order to be able to pass a verified
10952 name to any newly created child process.
10956 Is used as the users
10958 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
10962 This is assumed to be an absolute pathname.
10966 \*(OP Overrides the default path search for
10967 .Sx "The Mailcap files" ,
10968 which is defined in the standard RFC 1524 as
10969 .Ql ~/.mailcap:\:/etc/mailcap:\:/usr/etc/mailcap:\:/usr/local/etc/mailcap .
10970 .\" TODO we should have a mailcaps-default virtual RDONLY option!
10971 (\*(UA makes it a configuration option, however.)
10972 Note this is not a search path, but a path search.
10976 Is used as a startup file instead of
10979 When \*(UA scripts are invoked on behalf of other users,
10980 either this variable should be set to
10984 command line option should be used in order to avoid side-effects from
10985 reading their configuration files.
10986 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment.
10989 .It Ev MAILX_NO_SYSTEM_RC
10990 If this variable is set then reading of
10992 at startup is inhibited, i.e., the same effect is achieved as if \*(UA
10993 had been started up with the option
10995 (and according argument) or
10997 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment.
11001 The name of the users
11003 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
11005 A logical subset of the special
11006 .Sx "Filename transformations"
11010 The fallback default is
11015 Traditionally this MBOX is used as the file to save messages from the
11017 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
11018 that have been read.
11020 .Sx "Message states" .
11024 \*(IN\*(OP This variable overrides the default location of the user's
11030 Pathname of the program to use for backing the command
11034 variable enforces usage of a pager for output.
11035 The default paginator is
11037 (path search through
11040 \*(UA inspects the contents of this variable: if its contains the string
11042 then a non-existing environment variable
11049 dependent on whether terminal control support is available and whether
11050 that supports full (alternative) screen mode or not (also see
11051 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" ) .
11055 will optionally be set to
11062 A colon-separated list of directories that is searched by the shell when
11063 looking for commands, e.g.,
11064 .Ql /bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin .
11067 .It Ev POSIXLY_CORRECT
11068 This variable is automatically looked for upon startup, see
11074 The shell to use for the commands
11079 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
11080 and when starting subprocesses.
11081 A default shell is used if this environment variable is not defined.
11084 .It Ev SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
11085 This specifies a time in seconds since the Unix epoch (1970-01-01) to be
11086 used in place of the current time.
11087 This variable is looked up upon program startup, and its existence will
11088 switch \*(UA to a completely reproducible mode which causes
11089 deterministic random numbers, a special fixed (non-existent?)
11091 and more to be used and set.
11092 It is to be used during development or by software packagers.
11093 \*(ID Currently an invalid setting is only ignored, rather than causing
11094 a program abortion.
11096 .Dl $ SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH=`date +%s` \*(uA
11100 \*(OP The terminal type for which output is to be prepared.
11101 For extended colour and font control please refer to
11102 .Sx "Coloured display" ,
11103 and for terminal management in general to
11104 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" .
11108 Used as directory for temporary files instead of
11111 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment,
11112 but \*(UA will ensure at startup that this environment variable is
11113 updated to contain a usable temporary directory.
11119 (see there), but this variable is not standardized, should therefore not
11120 be used, and is only corrected if already set.
11124 Pathname of the text editor to use in the
11128 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
11136 .Bl -tag -width ".It Pa BaNg"
11138 File giving initial commands.
11141 System wide initialization file.
11145 \*(OP Personal MIME type handler definition file, see
11146 .Sx "The Mailcap files" .
11147 This location is part of the RFC 1524 standard search path, which is
11148 a configuration option and can be overridden via
11152 .It Pa /etc/mailcap
11153 \*(OP System wide MIME type handler definition file, see
11154 .Sx "The Mailcap files" .
11155 This location is part of the RFC 1524 standard search path, which is
11156 a configuration option and can be overridden via
11159 .It Pa ~/.mime.types
11160 Personal MIME types, see
11161 .Sx "The mime.types files" .
11162 The actually used path is a configuration option.
11165 .It Pa /etc/mime.types
11166 System wide MIME types, see
11167 .Sx "The mime.types files" .
11168 The actually used path is a configuration option.
11172 \*(IN\*(OP The default location of the users
11174 file \(en the section
11175 .Sx "The .netrc file"
11176 documents the file format.
11177 The actually used path is a configuration option and can be overridden via
11184 The actually used path is a compile-time constant.
11187 .\" .Ss "The mime.types files" {{{
11188 .Ss "The mime.types files"
11191 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments"
11192 \*(UA needs to learn about MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
11193 media types in order to classify message and attachment content.
11194 One source for them are
11196 files, the loading of which can be controlled by setting the variable
11197 .Va mimetypes-load-control .
11198 Another is the command
11200 which also offers access to \*(UAs MIME type cache.
11202 files have the following syntax:
11204 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11205 type/subtype extension [extension ...]
11206 # E.g., text/html html htm
11212 define the MIME media type, as standardized in RFC 2046:
11214 is used to declare the general type of data, while the
11216 specifies a specific format for that type of data.
11217 One or multiple filename
11219 s, separated by whitespace, can be bound to the media type format.
11220 Comments may be introduced anywhere on a line with a number sign
11222 causing the remaining line to be discarded.
11224 \*(UA also supports an extended, non-portable syntax in especially
11225 crafted files, which can be loaded via the alternative value syntax of
11226 .Va mimetypes-load-control ,
11227 and prepends an optional
11231 .Dl [type-marker ]type/subtype extension [extension ...]
11234 The following type markers are supported:
11237 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ar _n_u"
11239 Treat message parts with this content as plain text.
11244 Treat message parts with this content as HTML tagsoup.
11245 If the \*(OPal HTML-tagsoup-to-text converter is not available treat
11246 the content as plain text instead.
11250 but instead of falling back to plain text require an explicit content
11251 handler to be defined.
11256 for sending messages:
11258 .Va mime-allow-text-controls ,
11259 .Va mimetypes-load-control .
11260 For reading etc. messages:
11261 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" ,
11262 .Sx "The Mailcap files" ,
11264 .Va mime-counter-evidence ,
11265 .Va mimetypes-load-control ,
11266 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE ,
11267 .Va pipe-EXTENSION .
11270 .\" .Ss "The Mailcap files" {{{
11271 .Ss "The Mailcap files"
11273 .\" TODO MAILCAP DISABLED
11274 .Sy This feature is not available in v14.9.0, sorry!
11276 .Dq User Agent Configuration Mechanism
11277 which \*(UA \*(OPally supports (see
11278 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" ) .
11279 It defines a file format to be used to inform mail user agent programs
11280 about the locally-installed facilities for handling various data
11281 formats, i.e., about commands and how they can be used to display, edit
11282 etc. MIME part contents, as well as a default path search that includes
11283 multiple possible locations of
11287 environment variable that can be used to overwrite that (repeating here
11288 that it is not a search path, but instead a path search specification).
11289 Any existing files will be loaded in sequence, appending any content to
11290 the list of MIME type handler directives.
11294 files consist of a set of newline separated entries.
11295 Comment lines start with a number sign
11297 (in the first column!) and are ignored.
11298 Empty lines are also ignored.
11299 All other lines form individual entries that must adhere to the syntax
11301 To extend a single entry (not comment) its line can be continued on
11302 follow lines if newline characters are
11304 by preceding them with the reverse solidus character
11306 The standard does not specify how leading whitespace of follow lines
11307 is to be treated, therefore \*(UA retains it.
11311 entries consist of a number of semicolon
11313 separated fields, and the reverse solidus
11315 character can be used to escape any following character including
11316 semicolon and itself.
11317 The first two fields are mandatory and must occur in the specified
11318 order, the remaining fields are optional and may appear in any order.
11319 Leading and trailing whitespace of content is ignored (removed).
11322 The first field defines the MIME
11324 the entry is about to handle (case-insensitively, and no reverse solidus
11325 escaping is possible in this field).
11326 If the subtype is specified as an asterisk
11328 the entry is meant to match all subtypes of the named type, e.g.,
11330 would match any audio type.
11331 The second field defines the shell command which shall be used to
11333 MIME parts of the given type; it is implicitly called the
11340 shell commands message (MIME part) data is passed via standard input
11341 unless the given shell command includes one or more instances of the
11344 in which case these instances will be replaced with a temporary filename
11345 and the data will have been stored in the file that is being pointed to.
11348 shell commands data is assumed to be generated on standard output unless
11349 the given command includes (one ore multiple)
11351 In any case any given
11353 format is replaced with a(n already) properly quoted filename.
11354 Note that when a command makes use of a temporary file via
11356 then \*(UA will remove it again, as if the
11357 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile ,
11358 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill
11360 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink
11361 flags had been set; see below for more.
11364 The optional fields either define a shell command or an attribute (flag)
11365 value, the latter being a single word and the former being a keyword
11366 naming the field followed by an equals sign
11368 succeeded by a shell command, and as usual for any
11370 content any whitespace surrounding the equals sign will be removed, too.
11371 Optional fields include the following:
11374 .Bl -tag -width ".It Cd BaNg"
11376 A program that can be used to compose a new body or body part in the
11378 (Currently unused.)
11380 .It Cd composetyped
11383 field, but is to be used when the composing program needs to specify the
11385 header field to be applied to the composed data.
11386 (Currently unused.)
11389 A program that can be used to edit a body or body part in the given
11391 (Currently unused.)
11394 A program that can be used to print a message or body part in the given
11396 (Currently unused.)
11399 Specifies a program to be run to test some condition, e.g., the machine
11400 architecture, or the window system in use, to determine whether or not
11401 this mailcap entry applies.
11402 If the test fails, a subsequent mailcap entry should be sought; also see
11403 .Cd x-mailx-test-once .
11406 .It Cd needsterminal
11407 This flag field indicates that the given shell command must be run on
11408 an interactive terminal.
11409 \*(UA will temporarily release the terminal to the given command in
11410 interactive mode, in non-interactive mode this entry will be entirely
11411 ignored; this flag implies
11412 .Cd x-mailx-noquote .
11415 .It Cd copiousoutput
11416 A flag field which indicates that the output of the
11418 command will be an extended stream of textual output that can be
11419 (re)integrated into \*(UA's normal visual display.
11420 It is mutually exclusive with
11421 .Cd needsterminal .
11423 .It Cd textualnewlines
11424 A flag field which indicates that this type of data is line-oriented and
11425 that, if encoded in
11427 all newlines should be converted to canonical form (CRLF) before
11428 encoding, and will be in that form after decoding.
11429 (Currently unused.)
11431 .It Cd nametemplate
11432 This field gives a file name format, in which
11434 will be replaced by a random string, the joined combination of which
11435 will be used as the filename denoted by
11436 .Ev MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY .
11437 One could specify that a GIF file being passed to an image viewer should
11438 have a name ending in
11441 .Ql nametemplate=%s.gif .
11442 Note that \*(UA ignores the name template unless that solely specifies
11443 a filename suffix that consists of (ASCII) alphabetic and numeric
11444 characters, the underscore and dot only.
11447 Names a file, in X11 bitmap (xbm) format, which points to an appropriate
11448 icon to be used to visually denote the presence of this kind of data.
11449 This field is not used by \*(UA.
11452 A textual description that describes this type of data.
11455 .It Cd x-mailx-even-if-not-interactive
11456 An extension flag test field \(em by default handlers without
11458 are entirely ignored in non-interactive mode, but if this flag is set
11459 then their use will be considered.
11460 It is an error if this flag is set for commands that use the flag
11461 .Cd needsterminal .
11464 .It Cd x-mailx-noquote
11465 An extension flag field that indicates that even a
11468 command shall not be used to generate message quotes
11469 (as it would be by default).
11472 .It Cd x-mailx-async
11473 Extension flag field that denotes that the given
11475 command shall be executed asynchronously, without blocking \*(UA.
11476 Cannot be used in conjunction with
11477 .Cd needsterminal .
11480 .It Cd x-mailx-test-once
11481 Extension flag which denotes whether the given
11483 command shall be evaluated once only and the (boolean) result be cached.
11484 This is handy if some global unchanging condition is to be queried, like
11485 .Dq running under the X Window System .
11488 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile
11489 Extension flag field that requests creation of a zero-sized temporary
11490 file, the name of which is to be placed in the environment variable
11491 .Ev MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY .
11492 It is an error to use this flag with commands that include a
11497 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill
11498 Normally the MIME part content is passed to the handler via standard
11499 input; if this flag is set then the data will instead be written into
11501 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile .
11502 In order to cause deletion of the temporary file you will have to set
11503 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink
11505 It is an error to use this flag with commands that include a
11510 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink
11511 Extension flag field that requests that the temporary file shall be
11512 deleted automatically when the command loop is entered again at latest.
11513 (Do not use this for asynchronous handlers.)
11514 It is an error to use this flag with commands that include a
11516 format, or in conjunction with
11517 .Cd x-mailx-async ,
11518 or without also setting
11519 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile
11521 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill .
11524 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-keep
11527 implies the three tmpfile related flags above, but if you want, e.g.,
11529 and deal with the temporary file yourself, you can add in this flag to
11531 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink .
11536 The standard includes the possibility to define any number of additional
11537 entry fields, prefixed by
11539 Flag fields apply to the entire
11541 entry \(em in some unusual cases, this may not be desirable, but
11542 differentiation can be accomplished via separate entries, taking
11543 advantage of the fact that subsequent entries are searched if an earlier
11544 one does not provide enough information.
11547 command needs to specify the
11551 command shall not, the following will help out the latter (with enabled
11555 level \*(UA will show information about handler evaluation):
11557 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11558 application/postscript; ps-to-terminal %s; needsterminal
11559 application/postscript; ps-to-terminal %s; compose=idraw %s
11563 In fields any occurrence of the format string
11565 will be replaced by the
11568 Named parameters from the
11570 field may be placed in the command execution line using
11572 followed by the parameter name and a closing
11575 The entire parameter should appear as a single command line argument,
11576 regardless of embedded spaces; thus:
11578 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11580 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary=42
11583 multipart/*; /usr/local/bin/showmulti \e
11584 %t %{boundary} ; composetyped = /usr/local/bin/makemulti
11586 # Executed shell command
11587 /usr/local/bin/showmulti multipart/mixed 42
11591 .\" TODO v15: Mailcap: %n,%F
11592 Note that \*(UA does not support handlers for multipart MIME parts as
11593 shown in this example (as of today).
11594 \*(UA does not support the additional formats
11598 An example file, also showing how to properly deal with the expansion of
11600 which includes any quotes that are necessary to make it a valid shell
11601 argument by itself and thus will cause undesired behaviour when placed
11602 in additional user-provided quotes:
11604 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11606 text/richtext; richtext %s; copiousoutput
11608 text/x-perl; perl -cWT %s
11610 application/pdf; \e
11612 trap "rm -f ${infile}" EXIT\e; \e
11613 trap "exit 75" INT QUIT TERM\e; \e
11615 x-mailx-async; x-mailx-tmpfile-keep
11617 application/*; echo "This is \e"%t\e" but \e
11618 is 50 \e% Greek to me" \e; < %s head -c 1024 | cat -vET; \e
11619 copiousoutput; x-mailx-noquote
11624 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" ,
11625 .Sx "The mime.types files" ,
11628 .Va mime-counter-evidence ,
11629 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE ,
11630 .Va pipe-EXTENSION .
11633 .\" .Ss "The .netrc file" {{{
11634 .Ss "The .netrc file"
11638 file contains user credentials for machine accounts.
11639 The default location in the user's
11641 directory may be overridden by the
11643 environment variable.
11644 The file consists of space, tabulator or newline separated tokens.
11645 \*(UA implements a parser that supports a superset of the original BSD
11646 syntax, but users should nonetheless be aware of portability glitches
11647 of that file format, shall their
11649 be usable across multiple programs and platforms:
11652 .Bl -bullet -compact
11654 BSD does not support single, but only double quotation marks, e.g.,
11655 .Ql password="pass with spaces" .
11657 BSD (only?) supports escaping of single characters via a reverse solidus
11658 (e.g., a space can be escaped via
11660 in- as well as outside of a quoted string.
11662 BSD does not require a final quotation mark of the last user input token.
11664 The original BSD (Berknet) parser also supported a format which allowed
11665 tokens to be separated with commas \(en whereas at least Hewlett-Packard
11666 still seems to support this syntax, \*(UA does not!
11668 As a non-portable extension some widely-used programs support
11669 shell-style comments: if an input line starts, after any amount of
11670 whitespace, with a number sign
11672 then the rest of the line is ignored.
11674 Whereas other programs may require that the
11676 file is accessible by only the user if it contains a
11678 token for any other
11682 \*(UA will always require these strict permissions.
11686 Of the following list of supported tokens \*(UA only uses (and caches)
11691 At runtime the command
11693 can be used to control \*(UA's
11697 .Bl -tag -width ".It Cd BaNg"
11698 .It Cd machine Ar name
11699 The hostname of the entries' machine, lowercase-normalized by \*(UA
11701 Any further file content, until either end-of-file or the occurrence
11706 first-class token is bound (only related) to the machine
11709 As an extension that should not be the cause of any worries
11710 \*(UA supports a single wildcard prefix for
11712 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11713 machine *.example.com login USER password PASS
11714 machine pop3.example.com login USER password PASS
11715 machine smtp.example.com login USER password PASS
11721 .Ql pop3.example.com ,
11725 .Ql local.smtp.example.com .
11726 Note that in the example neither
11727 .Ql pop3.example.com
11729 .Ql smtp.example.com
11730 will be matched by the wildcard, since the exact matches take
11731 precedence (it is however faster to specify it the other way around).
11734 This is the same as
11736 except that it is a fallback entry that is used shall none of the
11737 specified machines match; only one default token may be specified,
11738 and it must be the last first-class token.
11740 .It Cd login Ar name
11741 The user name on the remote machine.
11743 .It Cd password Ar string
11744 The user's password on the remote machine.
11746 .It Cd account Ar string
11747 Supply an additional account password.
11748 This is merely for FTP purposes.
11750 .It Cd macdef Ar name
11752 A macro is defined with the specified
11754 it is formed from all lines beginning with the next line and continuing
11755 until a blank line is (consecutive newline characters are) encountered.
11758 entries cannot be utilized by multiple machines, too, but must be
11759 defined following the
11761 they are intended to be used with.)
11764 exists, it is automatically run as the last step of the login process.
11765 This is merely for FTP purposes.
11772 .\" .Sh EXAMPLES {{{
11775 .\" .Ss "An example configuration" {{{
11776 .Ss "An example configuration"
11778 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11779 # This example assumes v15.0 compatibility mode
11782 # Request strict transport security checks!
11783 set ssl-verify=strict
11785 # Where are the up-to-date SSL certificates?
11786 # (Since we manage up-to-date ones explicitly, do not use any,
11787 # possibly outdated, default certificates shipped with OpenSSL)
11788 #set ssl-ca-dir=/etc/ssl/certs
11789 set ssl-ca-file=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
11790 set ssl-ca-no-defaults
11791 #set ssl-ca-flags=partial-chain
11792 wysh set smime-ca-file="${ssl-ca-file}" \e
11793 smime-ca-no-defaults #smime-ca-flags="${ssl-ca-flags}"
11795 # Do not use protocols older than TLS v1.2.
11796 # Change this only when the remote server does not support it:
11797 # maybe use ssl-protocol-HOST (or -USER@HOST) syntax to define
11798 # such explicit exceptions, then, e.g.
11799 # set ssl-protocol-exam.ple='-ALL,+TLSv1.1'
11800 set ssl-protocol='-ALL,+TLSv1.2'
11802 # Explicitly define the list of ciphers, which may improve security,
11803 # especially with protocols older than TLS v1.2. See ciphers(1).
11804 # Including "@STRENGTH" will sort the final list by algorithm strength.
11805 # In reality it is possibly best to only use ssl-cipher-list-HOST
11806 # (or -USER@HOST), as necessary, again..
11807 set ssl-cipher-list=TLSv1.2:!aNULL:!eNULL:@STRENGTH
11808 # - TLSv1.2:!aNULL:!eNULL:\e
11809 # ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:\e
11810 # DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:@STRENGTH
11811 # -ALL:!aNULL:!eNULL:!MEDIUM:!LOW:!MD5:!RC4:!EXPORT:@STRENGTH
11812 # Especially with TLSv1.3 curves selection may be desired:
11813 #set ssl-curves=P-521:P-384:P-256
11815 # Essential setting: select allowed character sets
11816 set sendcharsets=utf-8,iso-8859-1
11818 # A very kind option: when replying to a message, first try to
11819 # use the same encoding that the original poster used herself!
11820 set reply-in-same-charset
11822 # When replying, do not merge From: and To: of the original message
11823 # into To:. Instead old From: -> new To:, old To: -> merge Cc:.
11824 set recipients-in-cc
11826 # When sending messages, wait until the Mail-Transfer-Agent finishs.
11827 # Only like this you will be able to see errors reported through the
11828 # exit status of the MTA (including the builtin SMTP one)!
11831 # Only use builtin MIME types, no mime.types(5) files
11832 set mimetypes-load-control
11834 # Default directory where we act in (relative to $HOME)
11836 # A leading "+" (often) means: under *folder*
11837 # *record* is used to save copies of sent messages
11838 set MBOX=+mbox.mbox DEAD=+dead.txt \e
11839 record=+sent.mbox record-files record-resent
11841 # Make "file mymbox" and "file myrec" go to..
11842 shortcut mymbox %:+mbox.mbox myrec +sent.mbox
11844 # Not really optional, e.g., for S/MIME
11845 set from='Your Name <address@exam.ple>'
11847 # It may be necessary to set hostname and/or smtp-hostname
11848 # if the "SERVER" of mta and "domain" of from do not match.
11849 # The `urlencode' command can be used to encode USER and PASS
11850 set mta=(smtps?|submission)://[USER[:PASS]@]SERVER[:PORT] \e
11851 smtp-auth=login/plain... \e
11854 # Never refuse to start into interactive mode, and more
11856 colour-pager crt= \e
11857 followup-to followup-to-honour=ask-yes \e
11858 history-file=+.\*(uAhist history-size=-1 history-gabby \e
11859 mime-counter-evidence=0xE \e
11860 prompt='?\e?!\e![\e${account}#\e${mailbox-display}]? ' \e
11861 reply-to-honour=ask-yes \e
11864 # Only include the selected header fields when typing messages
11865 headerpick type retain from_ date from to cc subject \e
11866 message-id mail-followup-to reply-to
11867 # ...when forwarding messages
11868 headerpick forward retain subject date from to cc
11869 # ...when saving message, etc.
11870 #headerpick save ignore ^Original-.*$ ^X-.*$
11872 # Some mailing lists
11873 mlist '@xyz-editor\e.xyz$' '@xyzf\e.xyz$'
11874 mlsubscribe '^xfans@xfans\e.xyz$'
11876 # Handle a few file extensions (to store MBOX databases)
11877 filetype bz2 'bzip2 -dc' 'bzip2 -zc' \e
11878 gz 'gzip -dc' 'gzip -c' xz 'xz -dc' 'xz -zc' \e
11879 zst 'zstd -dc' 'zstd -19 -zc' \e
11880 zst.pgp 'gpg -d | zstd -dc' 'zstd -19 -zc | gpg -e'
11882 # A real life example of a very huge free mail provider
11883 # Instead of directly placing content inside `account',
11884 # we `define' a macro: like that we can switch "accounts"
11885 # from within *on-compose-splice*, for example!
11887 set folder=~/spool/XooglX inbox=+syste.mbox sent=+sent
11888 set from='Your Name <address@examp.ple>'
11889 set mta=smtp://USER:PASS@smtp.gmXil.com smtp-use-starttls
11895 # Here is a pretty large one which does not allow sending mails
11896 # if there is a domain name mismatch on the SMTP protocol level,
11897 # which would bite us if the value of from does not match, e.g.,
11898 # for people who have a sXXXXeforge project and want to speak
11899 # with the mailing list under their project account (in from),
11900 # still sending the message through their normal mail provider
11902 set folder=~/spool/XandeX inbox=+syste.mbox sent=+sent
11903 set from='Your Name <address@exam.ple>'
11904 set mta=smtps://USER:PASS@smtp.yaXXex.ru:465 \e
11905 hostname=yaXXex.com smtp-hostname=
11911 # Create some new commands so that, e.g., `ls /tmp' will..
11912 commandalias lls '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFlrS'
11913 commandalias llS '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFlS'
11915 # We do not support gpg(1) directly yet. But simple --clearsign'd
11916 # message parts can be dealt with as follows:
11919 wysh set pipe-text/plain=$'@*#++=@\e
11920 < "${MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}" awk \e
11921 -v TMPFILE="${MAILX_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}" \e'\e
11923 /^-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----/,/^$/ {\e
11926 print "--- GPG --verify ---";\e
11927 system("gpg --verify " TMPFILE " 2>&1");\e
11928 print "--- GPG --verify ---";\e
11932 /^-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----/,\e
11933 /^-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----/{\e
11940 commandalias V '\e'call V
11944 When storing passwords in
11946 appropriate permissions should be set on this file with
11947 .Ql $ chmod 0600 \*(ur .
11950 is available user credentials can be stored in the central
11952 file instead; e.g., here is a different version of the example account
11953 that sets up SMTP and POP3:
11955 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11957 set folder=~/spool/XandeX inbox=+syste.mbox sent=+sent
11958 set from='Your Name <address@exam.ple>'
11960 # Load an encrypted ~/.netrc by uncommenting the next line
11961 #set netrc-pipe='gpg -qd ~/.netrc.pgp'
11963 set mta=smtps://smtp.yXXXXx.ru:465 \e
11964 smtp-hostname= hostname=yXXXXx.com
11965 set pop3-keepalive=240 pop3-no-apop-pop.yXXXXx.ru
11966 commandalias xp fi pop3s://pop.yXXXXx.ru
11978 .Bd -literal -offset indent
11979 machine *.yXXXXx.ru login USER password PASS
11983 This configuration should now work just fine:
11986 .Dl $ echo text | \*(uA -dvv -AXandeX -s Subject user@exam.ple
11989 .\" .Ss "Signed and encrypted messages with S/MIME" {{{
11990 .Ss "Signed and encrypted messages with S/MIME"
11992 \*(OP S/MIME provides two central mechanisms:
11993 message signing and message encryption.
11994 A signed message contains some data in addition to the regular text.
11995 The data can be used to verify that the message was sent using a valid
11996 certificate, that the sender's address in the message header matches
11997 that in the certificate, and that the message text has not been altered.
11998 Signing a message does not change its regular text;
11999 it can be read regardless of whether the recipient's software is able to
12003 It is thus usually possible to sign all outgoing messages if so desired.
12004 Encryption, in contrast, makes the message text invisible for all people
12005 except those who have access to the secret decryption key.
12006 To encrypt a message, the specific recipient's public encryption key
12008 It is therefore not possible to send encrypted mail to people unless their
12009 key has been retrieved from either previous communication or public key
12011 A message should always be signed before it is encrypted.
12012 Otherwise, it is still possible that the encrypted message text is
12016 A central concept to S/MIME is that of the certification authority (CA).
12017 A CA is a trusted institution that issues certificates.
12018 For each of these certificates it can be verified that it really
12019 originates from the CA, provided that the CA's own certificate is
12021 A set of CA certificates is usually delivered with OpenSSL and installed
12023 If you trust the source of your OpenSSL software installation,
12024 this offers reasonable security for S/MIME on the Internet.
12026 .Va smime-ca-no-defaults
12027 to avoid using the default certificate and point
12031 to a trusted pool of certificates.
12032 In general, a certificate cannot be more secure than the method its CA
12033 certificate has been retrieved with.
12036 The first thing you need for participating in S/MIME message exchange is
12037 your personal certificate, including a private key.
12038 The certificate contains public information, in particular your name and
12039 your email address(es), and the public key that is used by others to
12040 encrypt messages for you,
12041 and to verify signed messages they supposedly received from you.
12042 The certificate is included in each signed message you send.
12043 The private key must be kept secret.
12044 It is used to decrypt messages that were previously encrypted with your
12045 public key, and to sign messages.
12048 For personal use it is recommended that you get a S/MIME certificate
12049 from one of the major CAs on the Internet using your WWW browser.
12050 Many CAs offer such certificates for free.
12052 .Lk https://www.CAcert.org
12053 which issues client and server certificates to members of their
12054 community for free; their root certificate
12055 .Pf ( Lk https://\:www.cacert.org/\:certs/\:root.crt )
12056 is often not in the default set of trusted CA root certificates, though,
12057 which means you will have to download their root certificate separately
12058 and ensure it is part of our S/MIME certificate validation chain by
12061 or as a vivid member of the
12062 .Va smime-ca-file .
12063 But let us take a step-by-step tour on how to setup S/MIME with
12064 a certificate from CAcert.org despite this situation!
12067 First of all you will have to become a member of the CAcert.org
12068 community, simply by registrating yourself via the web interface.
12069 Once you are, create and verify all email addresses you want to be able
12070 to create signed and encrypted messages for/with using the corresponding
12071 entries of the web interface.
12072 Now ready to create S/MIME certificates, so let us create a new
12073 .Dq client certificate ,
12074 ensure to include all email addresses that should be covered by the
12075 certificate in the following web form, and also to use your name as the
12079 Create a private key and a certificate request on your local computer
12080 (please see the manual pages of the used commands for more in-depth
12081 knowledge on what the used arguments etc. do):
12084 .Dl openssl req -nodes -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout key.pem -out creq.pem
12087 Afterwards copy-and-paste the content of
12089 into the certificate-request (CSR) field of the web form on the
12090 CAcert.org website (you may need to unfold some
12091 .Dq advanced options
12092 to see the corresponding text field).
12093 This last step will ensure that your private key (which never left your
12094 box) and the certificate belong together (through the public key that
12095 will find its way into the certificate via the certificate-request).
12096 You are now ready and can create your CAcert certified certificate.
12097 Download and store or copy-and-paste it as
12102 In order to use your new S/MIME setup a combined private key/public key
12103 (certificate) file has to be created:
12106 .Dl cat key.pem pub.crt > ME@HERE.com.paired
12109 This is the file \*(UA will work with.
12110 If you have created your private key with a passphrase then \*(UA will
12111 ask you for it whenever a message is signed or decrypted.
12112 Set the following variables to henceforth use S/MIME (setting
12114 is of interest for verification only):
12116 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12117 set smime-ca-file=ALL-TRUSTED-ROOT-CERTS-HERE \e
12118 smime-sign-cert=ME@HERE.com.paired \e
12119 smime-sign-message-digest=SHA256 \e
12124 From each signed message you send, the recipient can fetch your
12125 certificate and use it to send encrypted mail back to you.
12126 Accordingly if somebody sends you a signed message, you can do the same,
12129 command to check the validity of the certificate.
12132 Variables of interest for S/MIME signing:
12134 .Va smime-ca-file ,
12135 .Va smime-ca-flags ,
12136 .Va smime-ca-no-defaults ,
12137 .Va smime-crl-dir ,
12138 .Va smime-crl-file ,
12140 .Va smime-sign-cert ,
12141 .Va smime-sign-include-certs
12143 .Va smime-sign-message-digest .
12146 After it has been verified save the certificate via
12148 and tell \*(UA that it should use it for encryption for further
12149 communication with that somebody:
12151 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12153 set smime-encrypt-USER@HOST=FILENAME \e
12154 smime-cipher-USER@HOST=AES256
12158 Additional variables of interest for S/MIME en- and decryption:
12161 .Va smime-encrypt-USER@HOST .
12164 You should carefully consider if you prefer to store encrypted messages
12166 If you do, anybody who has access to your mail folders can read them,
12167 but if you do not, you might be unable to read them yourself later if
12168 you happen to lose your private key.
12171 command saves messages in decrypted form, while the
12175 commands leave them encrypted.
12178 Note that neither S/MIME signing nor encryption applies to message
12179 subjects or other header fields yet.
12180 Thus they may not contain sensitive information for encrypted messages,
12181 and cannot be trusted even if the message content has been verified.
12182 When sending signed messages,
12183 it is recommended to repeat any important header information in the
12187 .\" .Ss "Using CRLs with S/MIME or SSL/TLS" {{{
12188 .Ss "Using CRLs with S/MIME or SSL/TLS"
12190 \*(OP Certification authorities (CAs) issue certificate revocation
12191 lists (CRLs) on a regular basis.
12192 These lists contain the serial numbers of certificates that have been
12193 declared invalid after they have been issued.
12194 Such usually happens because the private key for the certificate has
12196 because the owner of the certificate has left the organization that is
12197 mentioned in the certificate, etc.
12198 To seriously use S/MIME or SSL/TLS verification,
12199 an up-to-date CRL is required for each trusted CA.
12200 There is otherwise no method to distinguish between valid and
12201 invalidated certificates.
12202 \*(UA currently offers no mechanism to fetch CRLs, nor to access them on
12203 the Internet, so they have to be retrieved by some external mechanism.
12206 \*(UA accepts CRLs in PEM format only;
12207 CRLs in DER format must be converted, like, e.\|g.:
12210 .Dl $ openssl crl \-inform DER \-in crl.der \-out crl.pem
12213 To tell \*(UA about the CRLs, a directory that contains all CRL files
12214 (and no other files) must be created.
12219 variables, respectively, must then be set to point to that directory.
12220 After that, \*(UA requires a CRL to be present for each CA that is used
12221 to verify a certificate.
12224 .\" .Ss "Handling spam" {{{
12225 .Ss "Handling spam"
12227 \*(OP \*(UA can make use of several spam interfaces for the purpose of
12228 identification of, and, in general, dealing with spam messages.
12229 A precondition of most commands in order to function is that the
12231 variable is set to one of the supported interfaces.
12232 Once messages have been identified as spam their (volatile)
12234 state can be prompted: the
12238 message specifications will address respective messages and their
12240 entries will be used when displaying the
12242 in the header display.
12247 rates the given messages and sets their
12250 If the spam interface offers spam scores those can also be displayed in
12251 the header display by including the
12261 will interact with the Bayesian filter of the chosen interface and learn
12262 the given messages as
12266 respectively; the last command can be used to cause
12268 of messages; it adheres to their current
12270 state and thus reverts previous teachings.
12275 will simply set and clear, respectively, the mentioned volatile
12277 message flag, without any interface interaction.
12286 requires a running instance of the
12288 server in order to function, started with the option
12290 shall Bayesian filter learning be possible.
12292 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12293 $ spamd -i localhost:2142 -i /tmp/.spamsock -d [-L] [-l]
12294 $ spamd --listen=localhost:2142 --listen=/tmp/.spamsock \e
12295 --daemonize [--local] [--allow-tell]
12299 Thereafter \*(UA can make use of these interfaces:
12301 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12302 $ \*(uA -Sspam-interface=spamc -Sspam-maxsize=500000 \e
12303 -Sspamc-command=/usr/local/bin/spamc \e
12304 -Sspamc-arguments="-U /tmp/.spamsock" -Sspamc-user=
12306 $ \*(uA -Sspam-interface=spamc -Sspam-maxsize=500000 \e
12307 -Sspamc-command=/usr/local/bin/spamc \e
12308 -Sspamc-arguments="-d localhost -p 2142" -Sspamc-user=
12312 Using the generic filter approach allows usage of programs like
12314 Here is an example, requiring it to be accessible via
12317 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12318 $ \*(uA -Sspam-interface=filter -Sspam-maxsize=500000 \e
12319 -Sspamfilter-ham="bogofilter -n" \e
12320 -Sspamfilter-noham="bogofilter -N" \e
12321 -Sspamfilter-nospam="bogofilter -S" \e
12322 -Sspamfilter-rate="bogofilter -TTu 2>/dev/null" \e
12323 -Sspamfilter-spam="bogofilter -s" \e
12324 -Sspamfilter-rate-scanscore="1;^(.+)$"
12328 Because messages must exist on local storage in order to be scored (or
12329 used for Bayesian filter training), it is possibly a good idea to
12330 perform the local spam check last:
12332 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12333 define spamdelhook {
12335 spamset (header x-dcc-brand-metrics "bulk")
12336 # Server-side spamassassin(1)
12337 spamset (header x-spam-flag "YES")
12338 del :s # TODO we HAVE to be able to do `spamrate :u ! :sS'
12339 move :S +maybe-spam
12342 move :S +maybe-spam
12344 set folder-hook-FOLDER=spamdelhook
12348 See also the documentation for the variables
12349 .Va spam-interface , spam-maxsize ,
12350 .Va spamc-command , spamc-arguments , spamc-user ,
12351 .Va spamfilter-ham , spamfilter-noham , spamfilter-nospam , \
12354 .Va spamfilter-rate-scanscore .
12362 In general it is a good idea to turn on
12368 twice) if something does not work well.
12369 Very often a diagnostic message can be produced that leads to the
12370 problems' solution.
12372 .\" .Ss "\*(UA shortly hangs on startup" {{{
12373 .Ss "\*(UA shortly hangs on startup"
12375 This can have two reasons, one is the necessity to wait for a file lock
12376 and cannot be helped, the other being that \*(UA calls the function
12378 in order to query the nodename of the box (sometimes the real one is
12379 needed instead of the one represented by the internal variable
12381 One may have varying success by ensuring that the real hostname and
12385 or, more generally, that the name service is properly setup \(en
12388 return the expected value?
12389 Does this local hostname has a domain suffix?
12390 RFC 6762 standardized the link-local top-level domain
12392 try again after adding an (additional) entry with this extension.
12395 .\" .Ss "\*(UA exits quick, and output is cleared away" {{{
12396 .Ss "\*(UA exits quick, and output is cleared away"
12398 When this happens even with
12400 set, then this most likely indicates a problem with the creation of
12401 so-called dotlock files: setting
12402 .Va dotlock-ignore-error
12403 should overcome this situation.
12404 This only avoids symptoms, it does not address the problem, though.
12405 Since the output is cleared away \*(UA has support for
12406 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" ,
12407 and switches to the
12409 which causes the output clearance: by doing
12410 .Ql set termcap='smcup='
12411 this mode can be suppressed, and by setting
12413 (twice) the actual problem should be reported.
12416 .\" .Ss "I cannot login to Google mail aka GMail" {{{
12417 .Ss "I cannot login to Google mail aka GMail"
12419 Since 2014 some free service providers classify programs as
12421 unless they use a special authentification method (OAuth 2.0) which
12422 was not standardized for non-HTTP protocol authentication token query
12423 until August 2015 (RFC 7628).
12426 Different to Kerberos / GSSAPI, which is developed since the mid of the
12427 1980s, where a user can easily create a local authentication ticket for
12428 her- and himself with the locally installed
12430 program, that protocol has no such local part but instead requires
12431 a world-wide-web query to create or fetch a token; since there is no
12432 local cache this query would have to be performed whenever \*(UA is
12433 invoked (in interactive sessions situation may differ).
12436 \*(UA does not support OAuth.
12437 Because of this it is necessary to declare \*(UA a
12438 .Dq less secure app
12439 (on the providers account web page) in order to read and send mail.
12440 However, it also seems possible to take the following steps instead:
12445 give the provider the number of a mobile phone,
12448 .Dq 2-Step Verification ,
12450 create an application specific password (16 characters), and
12452 use that special password instead of the real Google account password in
12453 \*(UA (for more on that see the section
12454 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" ) .
12458 .\" .Ss "Not \(dqdefunctional\(dq, but the editor key does not work" {{{
12459 .Ss "Not \(dqdefunctional\(dq, but the editor key does not work"
12461 It can happen that the terminal library (see
12462 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor",
12465 reports different codes than the terminal really sends, in which case
12466 \*(UA will tell that a key binding is functional, but will not be able to
12467 recognize it because the received data does not match anything expected.
12472 ings will show the byte sequences that are expected.
12475 To overcome the situation, use, e.g., the program
12477 in conjunction with the command line option
12479 if available, to see the byte sequences which are actually produced
12480 by keypresses, and use the variable
12482 to make \*(UA aware of them.
12483 E.g., the terminal this is typed on produces some false sequences, here
12484 an example showing the shifted home key:
12486 .Bd -literal -offset indent
12489 # 1B 5B=[ 31=1 3B=; 32=2 48=H
12494 ? \*(uA -v -Stermcap='kHOM=\eE[H'
12503 .\" .Sh "SEE ALSO" {{{
12513 .Xr spamassassin 1 ,
12522 .Xr mailwrapper 8 ,
12527 .\" .Sh HISTORY {{{
12530 M. Douglas McIlroy writes in his article
12531 .Dq A Research UNIX Reader: Annotated Excerpts \
12532 from the Programmer's Manual, 1971-1986
12535 command already appeared in First Edition
12539 .Bd -ragged -offset indent
12540 Electronic mail was there from the start.
12541 Never satisfied with its exact behavior, everybody touched it at one
12542 time or another: to assure the safety of simultaneous access, to improve
12543 privacy, to survive crashes, to exploit uucp, to screen out foreign
12544 freeloaders, or whatever.
12545 Not until v7 did the interface change (Thompson).
12546 Later, as mail became global in its reach, Dave Presotto took charge and
12547 brought order to communications with a grab-bag of external networks
12553 Mail was written in 1978 by Kurt Shoens and developed as part of the
12556 distribution until 1995.
12557 Mail has then seen further development in open source
12559 variants, noticeably by Christos Zoulas in
12561 Based upon this Nail, later Heirloom Mailx, was developed by Gunnar
12562 Ritter in the years 2000 until 2008.
12563 Since 2012 S-nail is maintained by Steffen (Daode) Nurpmeso.
12564 This man page is derived from
12565 .Dq The Mail Reference Manual
12566 that was originally written by Kurt Shoens.
12572 .An "Kurt Shoens" ,
12573 .An "Edward Wang" ,
12574 .An "Keith Bostic" ,
12575 .An "Christos Zoulas" ,
12576 .An "Gunnar Ritter" ,
12577 .An "Steffen Nurpmeso" .
12584 provide contact addresses:
12586 .\" v15-compat: drop eval as `mail' will expand variable?
12587 .Dl ? echo $contact-web; eval mail $contact-mail
12590 .\" .Sh CAVEATS {{{
12593 \*(ID Interrupting an operation via
12597 from anywhere else but a command prompt is very problematic and likely
12598 to leave the program in an undefined state: many library functions
12599 cannot deal with the
12601 that this software (still) performs; even though efforts have been taken
12602 to address this, no sooner but in v15 it will have been worked out:
12603 interruptions have not been disabled in order to allow forceful breakage
12604 of hanging network connections, for example (all this is unrelated to
12608 The SMTP and POP3 protocol support of \*(UA is very basic.
12609 Also, if it fails to contact its upstream SMTP server, it will not make
12610 further attempts to transfer the message at a later time (setting
12615 If this is a concern, it might be better to set up a local SMTP server
12616 that is capable of message queuing.
12622 After deleting some message of a POP3 mailbox the header summary falsely
12623 claims that there are no messages to display, one needs to perform
12624 a scroll or dot movement to restore proper state.
12626 In threaded display a power user may encounter crashes very
12627 occasionally (this is may and very).
12631 in the source repository lists future directions.