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Path: utzoo!lsuc!dave
From: dave@lsuc.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: q: being notified of new mail
Message-ID: <1987Dec3.000951.15189@lsuc.uucp>
Date: Thu, 3-Dec-87 00:09:50 EST
Article-I.D.: lsuc.1987Dec3.000951.15189
Posted: Thu Dec  3 00:09:50 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Dec-87 17:46:39 EST
References: <4350001@wdl1.UUCP> <3600001@hpiacla.HP.COM> <4516@pyr.gatech.EDU>
Reply-To: dave@lsuc.UUCP (David Sherman)
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 39
Summary: use tra(1) if you don't have biff

In article <4516@pyr.gatech.EDU> ccoprrd@pyr.gatech.EDU (Richard Dervan) writes:
>Well, the 'biff' command also works.  In your .login or .profile,
>try:
>biff y
>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 can't use biff(1) because your mail isn't a BSD mpx file, but
you do have access to BSD utilities source, then tra(1) works
just as well -- even better, to my mind, since it spits out
the entire mail message, not just the first couple of lines.
I have a "tra - $MAIL &; trap "kill $!" 0" in my .profile, so
that mail to me ALWAYS gets to my screen right away.  You
learn to use the ctrl-L key to redraw your rn, more or
whatever screen, that's all.  If you get lots of mail, as
I do, seeing it right away is valuable.

tra has two bugs as distributed, as applied to this use: its
default run-time is 32767 seconds, which is too short if you
leave it running all day; and it doesn't seek back to the end
if your mail file gets shorter (when you read and dispose of
your mail). Both are easy to fix; I can send the changes if
anyone wants them.

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.  The '-' argument
suppresses printing of what's in the file at the time tra
starts up.

David Sherman
The Law Society of Upper Canada
Toronto
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