Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!grand!day
From: day@grand.UUCP (Dave Yost)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh
Subject: Here's a way to expire old messages
Message-ID: <401@grand.UUCP>
Date: 3 Feb 88 06:10:16 GMT
Organization: Grand Software, Inc., 213-650-1089, Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 45
Keywords: mh,expire,messages

I've been using mh since the beginning.
Here are some tips from an old hand.
Early on, Jim Guyton at Rand added this
refinement to the use of mh (with csh):
     alias rmm refile +deleted
and to exponge deleted mail, this:
     set mh=~/Mail
     alias mexp 'cd $mh/deleted; rm *'

More recently, I have instituted automatic
exponging of my deleted messages.  Every
night, +deleted messages not accessed in the
last 10 days are deleted, and the +deleted
folder is packed.  Here is the shell script
that is run every night out of cron (I
control my own /usr/lib/crontab):

======
#!/bin/sh
# exponge from +deleted all messages not accessed in 10 days
# This goes in /usr/lib/crontab
# 30 5 * * * su day -c 'sh /u/day/lib/cron.sh' > /u/day/lib/cron.out 2>&1

/bin/date
PATH=/u/day/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/ucb:/bin:/usr/bin:/etc:/usr/etc
export PATH
USER=day
export USER
HOME=/u/day
cd $HOME/Mail/deleted
x=`find . -type f -name '[123456789]*' -atime +10 -print`
echo "+rm -f $x"
      rm -f $x
echo "+folder -push +deleted"
      folder -push +deleted
echo "+folder -pack"
      folder -pack
echo "+folder -pop"
      folder -pop
======

This has made mh life a whole lot easier
for me.  I hope others enjoy it.

 --dave yost