Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!adm!OWENSJ%VTVM1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
From: OWENSJ%VTVM1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (John Owens)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: /usr/ucb/Mail blues
Message-ID: <11017@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: 28 Dec 87 22:01:23 GMT
Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA
Lines: 11

>When I read my mail, sometimes more mail will come in.  If I choose to
>Reply to a letter I am reading, and more mail has come in, mail will
>respond with:
>    ~ftw/mailbox/out1987: Ambiguous

What's happening is that Mail is calling the csh to evaluate the pathname
(since it contains a tilde), and the shell is coming back with more than
one word.  Mail then considers the shell to have expanded a wildcard to
more than one file, and says "Ambiguous".  (Mail calls the shell if
you give it a filename with any of ?*^ or possibly other characters.)
What are the other words?  "You have new mail."....