The mailx Utility

mailx is an interactive message processing system. It provides a flexible environment for sending and receiving messages electronically. mailx provides commands to save, delete, and reply to messages.

You can use mailx to edit, review, and modify messages. By default, incoming mail is stored in a standard file called a system mailbox, unless you specify an alternate mailbox file using the -f option. As incoming messages are read from the system mailbox, they are marked to be moved to a secondary file for storage. When you exit from mailx, these marked messages are moved to the secondary storage file. Hence these messages are not displayed the next time mailx is invoked. Messages remain in this file until removed explicitly.

During startup, mailx reads commands from a system-wide file, /usr/share/lib/mailx.rc, to initialize certain parameters. It then uses the personalized variables available in the user-specific startup file, $HOME/mailrc. When you invoke mailx, a header summary of all the messages is displayed, followed by a prompt indicating that mailx can accept regular options. Each message is assigned with a sequential number, and the first message is always marked by a > in the header summary.

mailx operates in command mode when you read mail and in input mode when you send mail. The behavior of mailx is governed by a set of environment variables, flags, and valued parameters that you can enable and disable using the set and unset options.

mailx provides a list of options, environment variables, and tilde escape commands. You can use tilde escape commands only in input mode by beginning a line with the tilde escape character (~). Environment variables are internal mailx program variables, and can be imported from the execution environment.

mailx provides native language support (NLS) for processing mails in different languages. To enable NLS support for a language, the respective language definition must exist in the HP-UX system. In an NLS environment, mailx depends on the time zone information defined in the mail header to display the date and time information. Table 1-2 “Time Zones Supported by mailx” lists the time zones currently supported by mailx.

	NOTE: mailx displays an incorrect date if it reads an email message with the time zone information that is not listed in Table 1-2 “Time Zones Supported by mailx”.

For more information about mailx, type man 1M mailx at the HP-UX prompt.