Reading Mail with the BSD mail Interface

Invoking

mail [-f folder_name]

Upon entering mail, one of two things may happen (depending on how the system was set up):

1.

For each piece of mail waiting to be read, one line contains information concerning who the mail comes from, when it was received, and (part of) the subject line of that message. mail prompts the user to enter a command.

2.

The last message received is displayed. mail prompts the user to decide what to do with this piece of mail.

Some of the most common commands are explained in the following sections.

• n: Next
• p: Print
• num: Print message num
• s: Save
• Sending a file to a printer
• h: Header
• d: Delete
• r: Reply
• s: Forward
• ~ m: Incorporating current message
• q: Quit