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From: jamesp@metolius.wr.tek.COM (James T Perkins)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh
Subject: Re: Using Unseen to check for new mail
Message-ID: <9103072018.AA12084@metolius.WR.TEK.COM>
Date: 7 Mar 91 20:18:52 GMT
References: <APPEL.91Mar7114337@swindle.ocf.Berkeley.EDU>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: "James T. Perkins" <jamesp@metolius.wr.tek.COM>
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 33


Howdy Shannon (Traveller Mailing List subscriber!),

Very simply, you could say:

	sh -c "scan +inbox unseen 2>/dev/null"

Which sends the error output to the bitbucket.  It depends on /bin/sh to
redirect stderr without redirecting stdout (one of things csh doesn't do
without major frustration).

You could make this more indirect using csh only, with:

	mhpath +inbox unseen >&/dev/null
	if ($status == 0) scan +inbox unseen

Or something like that.  The mhpath lists out the pathnames of the
messages in unseen, and sends them to the bitbucket.  It sets csh
variable status to 0 (success) if there is at least one unseen message,
and to 1 (error) if there are no unseen messages (the error message,
identical to scan's, has been redirected to the bitbucket).  The if
tests whether the mhpath suceeded or failed. if it suceeded (at least
one message), it runs scan on the unseen messages.

James (Traveller Mailing List Admin)

 ___    ___   ___
|   \  / _ \ / __|  James Perkins, jamesp@metolius.wr.tek.com, (503)629-1149
| |> || |_| |\__ \  Logic Analyzers Division, DAS 9200 Engineering
|___/ |_| |_||___/  Tektronix, MS 92-725, PO Box 4600, Beaverton, OR 97076

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