checkmail (a cute little mailchecking utility)
Steve Alesch
sja at ih1ap.UUCP
Fri Oct 3 03:06:25 AEST 1986
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
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