Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!cwns1!chet
From: chet@cwns1.CWRU.EDU (Chet Ramey)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.bug
Subject: Re: rmail.el should obey bash's MAILPATH
Summary: Not only bash does that
Message-ID: <1989Dec28.225319.22187@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
Date: 28 Dec 89 22:53:19 GMT
References: <8912261600.AA01743@ouareau.IRO.UMontreal.CA> <32484@news.Think.COM>
Distribution: gnu
Organization: Case Western Reserve Univ. Cleveland, Ohio, (USA)
Lines: 32

In article <32484@news.Think.COM> rlk@think.com (Robert Krawitz) writes:
>In article <8912261600.AA01743@ouareau.IRO.UMontreal.CA>, mcgill-vision!iros1!pinard@EDDIE (Francois Pinard) writes:

>]Under bash, the user inbox is described by $MAILPATH.  I believe rmail
>]should first check for the existence of $MAILPATH first.
>
>Does any program but bash actually use this convention?

bash, sh, ksh, ash -- basically any post-Sys V.2 sh implementation uses it
(which means sh on almost any system but 4.3 BSD or Ultrix).  It's a
generalization of $MAIL that lets you watch a number of different files and
specify a custom message for each file watched. 

Here's a quote from a manual page:

          MAILPATH
               A colon (:) separated list of filenames.  If  this
               parameter  is  set,  the shell informs the user of
               the arrival of mail in any of the specified files.
               Each  filename  can be followed by % and a message
               that will be printed when  the  modification  time
               changes.  The default message is "you have mail."

(For ksh and bash, the message is `you have mail in $_', where $_ expands
to the filename.)


-- 
Chet Ramey
Network Services Group				"Where's my froggie?"
Case Western Reserve University
chet@ins.CWRU.Edu