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From: tr@samadams.princeton.edu (Tom Reingold)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh
Subject: Re: mh and sequences
Keywords: mh, sequences
Message-ID: <5519@rossignol.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 20 Dec 90 22:34:44 GMT
References: <4eb69609.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Sender: news@cs.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Noo Joizy -- The Cultural Mecca
Lines: 61

In article <4eb69609.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> marc@apollo.HP.COM (Marc
Gibian) writes:

$ [...]
$ But, I keep finding a need to do a number of things that I can't
$ find anyway of accomplishing without writing more shell 
$ scripts/functions.  Before doing that, I thought I would 
$ ask if anyone already can do any of the following:
$ 
$ 1.  Read one message at a time forward through a sequence, rather
$ than all messages in a folder.

In my .mh_profile, I have an entry:

pick: -seq select -list

which puts "pick" sequences into a sequence called "select".  So a
command for your problem number 1 would be

for i in `pick select`
do
	echo -n 'message $i: '
	read junk
	show $i
done

$ 2.  Do 1 backwards.

for in in `pick select | rev`
do
	echo -n 'message $i: '
	read junk
	show $i
done

where "rev" is a program that prints its input last line first, and so
on.  How to write this program "is left as an exercise for the reader"
as some pedants love to say.

$ 3.  pick through a number of folders in a single command/script.
$ 
$ 4.  Do 1 & 2 with the results of 3.

It would be nice if this were easy.  In the meantime, you have to do
something like

for j in `folders $* -fast -recurse`
do
	...
done

$ 5.  any other neat suggestions for handling this kind of message
$ volume?
$ [...]

Change jobs.
--
        Tom Reingold
        tr@samadams.princeton.edu  OR  ...!princeton!samadams!tr
        "Warning: Do not drive with Auto-Shade in place.  Remove
        from windshield before starting ignition."