MH(1) General Commands Manual MH(1) NAME mh - Message Handler SYNOPSIS any MH command DESCRIPTION MH is the name of a powerful message handling system. Rather then being a single comprehensive program, MH consists of a collection of fairly simple single-purpose programs to send, receive, save, and retrieve messages. The user should refer to the MH User's Manual and the pages for the MH programs in the Unix Programmers Manual. Unlike mail, the standard UNIX mail user interface program, MH is not a closed system which must be explicitly run, then exited when you wish to return to the shell. You may freely intersperse MH commands with other shell commands, allowing you to read and answer your mail while you have (for example) a compilation running, or search for a file or run programs as needed to find the answer to someone's question before answering their mail. The rest of this manual entry is a quick tutorial which will teach you the basics of MH. You should read the manual entries for the individual pro- grams for complete documentation. To get started using MH, put the directory /usr/local/bin on your $PATH. This is best done in one of the files: .profile, .login, or .cshrc in your home directory. (Check the manual entry for the shell you use, in case you don't know how to do this.) Run the inc command. If you've never used MH before, it will create the necessary default files and directories after asking you if you wish it to do so. inc moves mail from your system maildrop into your MH `+inbox' folder, breaking it up into separate files and converting it to MH format as it goes. It prints one line for each message it processes, containing the from field, the subject field and as much of the first line of the message as will fit. It leaves the first message it processes as your current mes- sage. You'll need to run inc each time you wish to incorporate new mail into your MH file. scan prints a list of the messages in your current folder. The commands: show, next, and prev are used to read specific messages from the current folder. show displays the current message, or a specific mes- sage, which may be specified by its number, which you pass as an argument to show. next and prev display, respectively, the message numerically af- ter or before the current message. In all cases, the message displayed be- comes the current message. If there is no current message, show may be called with an argument, or next may be used to advance to the first mes- sage. rmm (remove message) deletes the current message. It may be called with message numbers passed as arguments, to delete specific messages. repl is used to respond to the current message (by default). It places you in the editor with a prototype response form. While you're in the editor, you may peruse the item you're responding to by reading the file @. After completing your response, type l to review it, or s to send it. comp allows you to compose a message by putting you in the editor on a pro- totype message form, and then lets you send it. All the MH commands may be run with the single argument: `-help', which causes them to print a list of the arguments they may be invoked with. Commands which take a message number as an argument (scan, show, repl, ...) also take one of the words: first, prev, cur, next, or last to indicate (respectively) the first, previous, current, next, or last message in the current folder (assuming they are defined). Commands which take a range of message numbers (rmm, scan, show, ...) also take any of the abbreviations: <num1>-<num2> - Indicates all messages in the range <num1> to <num2>, in- clusive. The range must be nonempty. <num>:+N <num>:-N - Up to N messages beginning with (or ending with) message num. Num may be any of the pre-defined symbols: first, prev, cur, next or last. first:N prev:N next:N last:N - The first, previous, next or last N messages, if they exist. There are many other possibilities such as creating multiple folders for different topics, and automatically refiling messages according to subject, source, destination, or content. These are beyond the scope of this manual entry. Following is a list of all the MH commands: ali (1) - list mail aliases anno (1) - annotate messages burst (1) - explode digests into messages comp (1) - compose a message dist (1) - redistribute a message to additional addresses folder (1) - set/list current folder/message folders (1) - list all folders forw (1) - forward messages inc (1) - incorporate new mail mark (1) - mark messages mhl (1) - produce formatted listings of MH messages mhmail (1) - send or read mail mhook (1) - MH receive-mail hooks mhparam (1) - print MH profile components mhpath (1) - print full pathnames of MH messages and folders msgchk (1) - check for messages msh (1) - MH shell (and BBoard reader) next (1) - show the next message packf (1) - compress a folder into a single file pick (1) - select messages by content prev (1) - show the previous message prompter (1) - prompting editor front end rcvstore (1) - incorporate new mail asynchronously refile (1) - file messages in other folders repl (1) - reply to a message rmf (1) - remove folder rmm (1) - remove messages scan (1) - produce a one line per message scan listing send (1) - send a message show (1) - show (list) messages slocal (1) - special local mail delivery sortm (1) - sort messages vmh (1) - visual front-end to MH whatnow (1) - prompting front-end for send whom (1) - report to whom a message would go mh-alias (5) - alias file for MH message system mh-format (5) - format file for MH message system mh-mail (5) - message format for MH message system mh-profile (5) - user customization for MH message system mh-sequence (5)- sequence specification for MH message system ap (8) - parse addresses 822-style conflict (8) - search for alias/password conflicts dp (8) - parse dates 822-style fmtdump (8) - decode MH format files install-mh (8) - initialize the MH environment post (8) - deliver a message FILES /usr/local/bin directory containing MH commands /usr/local/lib/mh MH library SEE ALSO The RAND MH Message Handling System: User's Manual, The RAND MH Message Handling System: Tutorial, The RAND MH Message Handling System: The UCI BBoards Facility, MH.5: How to process 200 messages a day and still get some real work done BUGS If problems are encountered with an MH program, the problems should be re- ported to the local maintainers of MH. When doing this, the name of the program should be reported, along with the version information for the pro- gram. To find out what version of an MH program is being run, invoke the program with the `-help' switch. In addition to listing the syntax of the command, the program will list information pertaining to its version. This informa- tion includes the version of MH, the host it was generated on, and the date the program was loaded. A second line of information, found on versions of MH after #5.380 include MH configuration options. For example, version: MH 6.1 #1[UCI] (glacier) of Wed Nov 6 01:13:53 PST 1985 options: [BSD42] [MHE] [NETWORK] [SENDMTS] [MMDFII] [SMTP] [POP] The `6.1 #1[UCI]' indicates that the program is from the UCI MH.6.1 version of MH. The program was generated on the host `glacier' on `Wed Nov 6 01:13:53 PST 1985'. It's usually a good idea to send the output of the `-help' switch along with your report. If there is no local MH maintainer, try the address Bug-MH. If that fails, use the Internet mailbox Bug-MH@ICS.UCI.EDU. FILES $HOME/.mh_profile The user profile PROFILE COMPONENTS Path: To determine the user's MH directory [mh.6] MH.6.8 MH(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | FILES | SEE ALSO | BUGS | FILES | PROFILE COMPONENTS
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