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From: yamada-sun!eric@AI.MIT.EDU (Eric Hanchrow)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs
Subject: RMAIL does something I don't understand...
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Date: 2 Feb 91 02:15:15 GMT
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I've noticed that rmail determines which mailbox to read by looking at
the LOGNAME environment variable.  It prefers LOGNAME over USER, which
means if I log in (for example) as root, and then `su' as bob, and try
to read mail, I get an error to the effect that `bob' can't read
`root's mail.  Here's the code where it figures out who you are for
the sake of reading mail:
     (list "~/mbox"
	(concat rmail-spool-directory
	(or (getenv "LOGNAME")
		(getenv "USER")
		(user-login-name))))

Were I running things, I would check in the exact opposite order.  My
question is: does anybody know the reasoning behind this code?

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