nmh is the name of a powerful message handling system. Rather than
being a single comprehensive program, nmh consists of a collection
of fairly simple single-purpose programs to send, retrieve, save,
and manipulate messages.
Unlike most mail clients in UNIX, nmh is not a closed system which
must be explicitly run, then exited when you wish to return to the shell.
You may freely intersperse nmh 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 nmh. You should read the manual entries for the
individual programs for complete documentation.
To get started using nmh, put the directory /usr/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 nmh
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 nmh
`+inbox' folder, breaking it up into separate files and converting it
to nmh 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 message. You'll need to run inc each
time you wish to incorporate new mail into your nmh 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 message, which may be specified by its
number, which you pass as an argument to show. next and
prev display, respectively, the message numerically after or before
the current message. In all cases, the message displayed becomes 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 message.
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 list
(review) it, or s to send it.
comp allows you to compose a message by putting you in the editor
on a prototype message form, and then lets you send it.
All the nmh commands may be run with the single argument: `-help',
which causes them to print a list of the arguments they may be invoked
with and then exit.
All the nmh commands may be run with the single argument:
`-version', which cause them to print the version number of the nmh
distribution, and then exit.
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:
+5
<num1>-<num2>
- Indicates all messages in the range <num1> to <num2>, inclusive. 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.
-5
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 nmh commands: