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From: root@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.micro.att
Subject: Re: fix for lack of editor escape in mail on 7300
Message-ID: <512@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 21-Jul-85 12:44:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.512
Posted: Sun Jul 21 12:44:10 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 23-Jul-85 04:49:04 EDT
References: <623@astrovax.UUCP>
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 34

>From: richmon@astrovax.UUCP (Michael Richmond)
>Subject: fix for lack of editor escape in mail on 7300
>
>  When I discovered that one cannot use the tilde escapes such as ~v or
>~p while in mail on my 7300 ... 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.

A fine suggestion, but may I suggest a slight improvement, the following:

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

Sets the shell variable 'tmpfile' to /tmp/LETnnnn where nnnn is the
process id of the shell (eg. /tmp/LET579). Then if, for example, you
pushed out of the editor and invoked this script again (say you suddenly
realized you needed to ask someone else about something before finishing
the letter) you wouldn't trash the original file (or if there were more
than one user, etc.) Just a suggestion, also a general one when creating
tmp files in shell scripts (warning: I didn't try the above, forgive
slight errors, the point is that '$$' is a built-in variable with the
pid of the shell executing the script which should be unique enough.)

	-Barry Shein, Boston University