Reading Mail

When someone sends a mail message to you, it is delivered to a file called your "maildrop" file. When you are ready to read your mail, you have to incorporate your mail messages from the mail drop area into your account.

Everytime you log in to your Unix account, you will be told if you have new mail messages. When you are ready to read them, type "inc". The "inc" program will copy your mail into your 'inbox' and generate a "scan" listing of the new messages. For example,

% inc Incorporating new mail into inbox... 1+ 02/15 Pat Harris Re: Gajski's paper< As you can see, when the messages are copied into your 'inbox' folder they are assigned unique message numbers. This allows you to refer to each message by its number. The current message is indicated by the "+" sign. This current message is the one that the commands act on by default. For example, if you type "show" without specifying which message you wish to see, you will be shown the "current" message. The current message is usually the most recently referenced message in each folder.

When you are ready to read a message, type "show". The first message in the list will be displayed on your terminal screen. If the message is longer than one screenful, you will be shown the first screenful and then it will pause. When you press [SPACE] you will be shown one more screenful or you could press [RETURN] to see one more line. When you are ready to see the next message, you could type a couple of different commands:

or or All of these commands would have the same effect: to type out the next message in the list. The most efficient thing to do is to type "next". When you do that, message number 2 will be shown and become the "current message".

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