MAIL.LOCAL(8) UNIX System Manager’s Manual MAIL.LOCAL(8)

NAME
mail.local - store mail in a mailbox

SYNOPSIS
mail.local [-f from] user ...

DESCRIPTION
Mail.local reads the standard input up to an end-of-file and appends it
to each user’s mail file. The user must be a valid user name.

The options are as follows:

-f from Specify the sender’s name.

Individual mail messages in the mailbox are delimited by an empty line
followed by a line beginning with the string ‘‘From ’’. A line contain-
ing the string ‘‘From ’’, the sender’s name and a time stamp is prepended
to each delivered mail message. A blank line is appended to each mes-
sage. A greater-than character (‘‘>’’) is prepended to any line in the
message which could be mistaken for a ‘‘From ’’ delimiter line.

The mail files are exclusively locked with flock(2) while mail is append-
ed.

If the ‘‘biff’’ service is returned by getservbyname(3), the biff server
is notified of delivered mail.

The mail.local utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

ENVIRONMENT
TZ Used to set the appropriate time zone on the timestamp.

FILES
/tmp/local.XXXXXX temporary files
/var/mail/user user’s mailbox directory

SEE ALSO
mail(1), xsend(1), flock(2), getservbyname(3), comsat(8), send-
mail(8)

HISTORY
A superset of mail.local (handling mailbox reading as well as mail deliv-
ery) appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX. as the program mail.

BSD Experimental December 11, 1993 1