Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnewsc!gregg
From: gregg@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (gregg.g.wonderly)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh
Subject: Re: Refile
Message-ID: <1250@cbnewsc.ATT.COM>
Date: 14 Jun 89 14:42:36 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 55

For those thinking about adding certain defaults to MH, please keep them
in the .mh_profile file.  Use m_find() instead of getenv().  They both
return (char *).  m_find() searches both .mh_profile, and the
{path}/context file, so beware of using something that might exist in
{path}/context.  For the refile(1) example, something like

	if (folder == NULL)
		folder = m_find ("refile-default");

seems appropriate.  Then you can add the line

refile-default: +misc

to your .mh_profile.  I am not sure whether I prefer the symlink to another
command name in this case or not.

For the next release of MH, I would like to see a new program
incorporated which allows use/manipulation of the {path}/context and
.mh_profile entries.  I have written one such program which I called,
mhcontext.  It has the options -delete, -component and -text.  When
envoked with '-comp string', it prints the value of that entry on
stdout.  E.g.

	$ mhcontext -comp Unseen-sequence
	unread
	$ 

This gives shell script front ends half a change at being portable given
the flexibility that MH provides.

	$ mhcontext -comp oFolder-stack -text "`mhcontext -comp folder-stack`"
	$ alias popfs 'mhcontext -comp folder-stack -text \
		"`mhcontext -comp ofolder-stack`"'
	$ mhcontext -comp Folder-Stack -text "`seq unread`"

Allows me to use my seq(1) program (which I described here previously,
to 

	1)  Save the previous folder stack.
	2)  Create an alias which allows me to restore the saved value
	3)	Create a new folder stack containing the folders with messages
		having the 'unread' sequence set.

There are many other possibilities, I won't enumerate them here.

The -delete switch allows you to delete a component from the {path}/context
file (attempts to delete something from .mh_profile yield an interesting
message).  This options intended usage is to allow the context file to be
accessed by scripts which will maintain their own information there.

Comments?

-- 
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gregg.g.wonderly@att.com   (AT&T bell laboratories)