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From: eap@bucsb.UUCP (Eric Pearce)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: q: being notified of new mail
Message-ID: <1308@bucsb.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-Dec-87 10:03:10 EST
Article-I.D.: bucsb.1308
Posted: Fri Dec  4 10:03:10 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Dec-87 02:48:34 EST
References: <4350001@wdl1.UUCP> <3600001@hpiacla.HP.COM> <4516@pyr.gatech.EDU> <1987Dec3.000951.15189@lsuc.uucp>
Reply-To: eap@bucsb.UUCP (Eric Pearce)
Organization: BD&HR (Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers)
Lines: 44

In article <1987Dec3.000951.15189@lsuc.uucp> dave@lsuc.UUCP (David Sherman) writes:
>In article <4516@pyr.gatech.EDU> ccoprrd@pyr.gatech.EDU (Richard Dervan) writes:
>>Well, the 'biff' command also works.  In your .login or .profile,
>>That should arrive you when mail arrives.  The only thing is that it will
>>even tell you if you're in vi or something like that.  The thing about it
>>is that it will tell you who the mail is from in addition to just saying
>>"Hey!  You got some new mail!"
>
>If you don't have tra(1) but have good C programming skills,
>you can probably write it in 10 minutes.  It just sits and
>watches a file's size, displaying anything that's been added
>to the file's tail every time it grows.  

I wrote something of this sort as a part of another program.  Somebody might
find this useful, so here it is.

#include 
#include  
#include 
#define MAILFILE "/usr/spool/mail/yourname"
#define SLEEP 30
main()
{ 
 struct stat st;
 char path[50];
 int old_size=0,new_size=0;

 while(1) {   
    old_size = new_size;
    if (!stat(sprintf(path, "%s", MAILFILE), &st)) 
      new_size = st.st_size;
    if (old_size < new_size) fprintf(stderr,"You have new mail.\n"); 
    sleep(SLEEP);
 }
}

Actually displaying the new mail seems like something best left to your mail
program, but that's just an opinion ...

                                                         -eap
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