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From: richmon@astrovax.UUCP (Michael Richmond)
Newsgroups: net.micro.att
Subject: fix for lack of editor escape in mail on 7300
Message-ID: <623@astrovax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Jul-85 16:25:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: astrovax.623
Posted: Fri Jul 19 16:25:12 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Jul-85 12:08:12 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Princeton Univ. Astrophysics
Lines: 29


  When I discovered that one cannot use the tilde escapes such as ~v or
~p while in mail on my 7300, I was somewhat upset, since I am such a bad
typist that something always goes wrong. So I worked up the following short
shell script to automatically put me in vi (or whatever editor is desired)
when I invoke mail, and use the file thus created as the message.

	if test $# -lt 1
	then
		/bin/mail
	else
		/usr/bin/vi /tmp/letter
		if test -s /tmp/letter
		then
			/bin/mail $1 $2 $3 < /tmp/letter
			/bin/rm /tmp/letter
		fi
	fi

  I put this script, called 'mail', in a directory before /bin in my $PATH.
Things you might want to change are /usr/bin/vi for an editor of your choice;
changing the line that removes /tmp/letter for one that appends it to a mail
archive; or adding $4, $5 and more to the /bin/mail command line if you are
in the habit of mailing to more than three persons at once. 

-- 
Michael Richmond			Princeton University, Astrophysics

{allegra,akgua,burl,cbosgd,decvax,ihnp4,noao,princeton,vax135}!astrovax!richmon