UnixWorld ``New To Unix'' Column: October 1988: Listings

Listing 1. Electronic mail is an important UNIX system service

A. Use the UNIX mail command to read your mail:

log-in sequence
You have mail
$ mail
>From dab Mon Oct 12 18:06 MDT 1988
Don't forget to write the intro for the C language training brochure.
I need it by tomorrow morning if I'm to get the material to the printer
in time. 

Thanks
Doris
? d
$ []

B. If you don't remember what to do while using the mail program, type a question mark to display an on-line help message that summarizes mail commands. Here's a typical display:

q              quit
x              exit without changing mail
p              print
s [file]       save (default mbox)
w [file]       same without header
-              print previous
d              delete
+              next (no delete)
m (user)       mail to user
! cmd          execute cmd

C. To send mail to another user, type "mail" with the use's log-in name as an argument. Type the text of the message followed by a dot (.) or Control-D on a line by itself.

$ mail dab
Thanks for the reminder, Doris. I just sent the intro in a
separate mailing. If you have any problems with it, let me know.

Bye,
Augie
.
$ []

D. The mail program commands allows you to address mail to more than one user and to take text from a file via redirection:

$ mail dab viv ddc < new_procs
$ []

Listing 2: An example (fictional) UUCP-network

A. System interconnections among a group of Unix systems are obtained via direct and dial-up UUCP connections.

+--------+  +-------+  +-------+  +-------+
| site1  |--| site2 |--| backa |--| site3 |-- jones
+--------+  +-------+  +-------+  +-------+
   |                       |
  mary                 +-------+  +-------+
                       | backb |--| site4 |-- sparks
                       +-------+  +-------+
                           |
                         candy

B. Here are some sample mail paths between users on this network:

mary to jones:     site2!backa!site3!jones
mary to sparks:    site2!backb!site4!sparks
candy to mary:     backa!site2!site!mary

C. Equivalent Internet-style addressing. (Note: we need to convert each machine host name to a valid Internet domain name by tacking on a valid domain. Here we use ``.com'' for simplicity.)

mary to jones:     jones@site3.com
mary to sparks:    sparks@site4.com
candy to mary:     mary@site.com