Bug in mailx(1)

[Tom Neff]

System V/386 Release 3.2, Release 2.1.  Monday, 3:23 PM. My partner is
Bill Gannon...  OOPS wrong show.  never mind :-)

Anyway, when you run mailx(1), which I'm not sure why anyone in his
right mind would to begin with, the -e option (check for mail and report
results via the exit code) leaves a very nice little lock file dangling
after it exits (e.g., /usr/mail/tneff.lock).

I found this out because I had a "mailx -e" in my profile to check for
pending mail at login time, and when I installed the useful little agent
"deliver" it had mild coronaries at the perennial presence of this .lock
file.  Deliver could be modified to actually read the lock file and
verify the process number, but there's still a bug in mailx.
-- 
"We walked on the moon --	((	Tom Neff
	you be polite"		 )) 	tneff at bfmny0.UU.NET