checkmail (a cute little mailchecking utility)

[Steve Alesch]

In article <996 at hoptoad.uucp>, tim at hoptoad.UUCP writes:
> It's been a while since I mentioned this trick I worked up a cuple of years
> ago, so I thought I'd distribute it again:
> 
> The problem is that most of us have mailboxes which have back mail in them,
> so the login message "You have mail." tells us nothing.  Scanning the
> mailbox takes too long on login.  What we really want to know is whether
> mail arrived while we were logged out.
> 

I assume that you either never read your mail or your read it  but
keep  everything  in  $MAIL.   If you never read your mail why not
just set up a cron job to ``rm $MAIL'' once a day. :-)	It's  more
likely	that you started reading your mail originally, but after a
few weeks of leaving everything	in $MAIL, the pile of mail grew	to
an  unmanageable  size.	 The mail software (SVR2 mailx or Berkeley
mail) allows you to  save  your	 mail  under  appropriately  named
categories, or delete it.  Why not use them?

When you read your mail	from the good ole U.S  Postal  Service	do
you  then  put	it  back in your mailbox?  Or do you throw it away
(delete	it), or	categorize it and save it somewhere in	your  home
paper  file  system?   If  I  were  to	suggest	a clever tool that
allowed	you to determine what new pieces of mail were put in  your
mailbox	by the mailman today, what would you say to me?

E-mail does require some discipline on your  part.   You  have	to
read  it  about	once a day, delete the junk or informational stuff
and save the rest somewhere else. I don't think	this is	such a big
price  to  pay	considering  the benefits it provides.	After all,
you've done the	same thing with	your mailbox in	front of your home
your whole life.
-- 

Steve Alesch	AT&T
(312)510-7881, ...!ihnp4!ih1ap!sja