I have recently taken over a UNIX system from another programmer and am just beginning to learn UNIX.
When I enter the MAIL command, the data scrolls off the screen for five minutes. Some of it is several years old.
Can I tell the MAIL command to give me the last few items or the last few days only?
I would like to delete some of the older material? Must it be done one item at a time or can I do it by date or contents?
thank you for your help
mail displays one message at a time, so if it is scrolling for a while after you type mail, the first mail must have a binary attachment. type d after it stops to remove that message.
man is your friend
Reading Mail
The following command-line arguments affect reading mail:
-e Mail is not printed. An exit status of 0 is returned
if the user has mail; otherwise, an exit status of 1
is returned.
-h A window of headers are initially displayed rather
than the latest message. The display is followed by
the ? prompt.
-p All messages are printed without prompting for dispo-
sition.
-P All messages are printed with all header lines
displayed, rather than the default selective header
line display.
-q mail terminates after interrupts. Normally an inter-
rupt causes only the termination of the message being
printed.
-r Messages are printed in first-in, first-out order.
Once in the mail program here are a few commands
d, or dp
Delete the current message and print the next message.
d n Delete message number n. Do not go on to next message.
dq Delete message and quit mail.
h Display a window of headers around current message.
h n Display a window of headers around message number n.
h a Display headers of all messages in the user's mail-
file.
h d Display headers of messages scheduled for deletion.
u [ n ]
Undelete message number n (default is last read).
? Print a command summary.