.mailrc

[Lloyd Zusman]

In article <10371 at ames.arc.nasa.gov> rrobinson at ames.arc.nasa.gov (Randall W. Robinson) writes:
  in article <4097 at fluke.COM>, strong at tc.fluke.COM (Norm Strong) says:
  > 
  > I would like to put something in my .mailrc file, so that I will automatically
  > be in the vi editor when I invoke the mail program.  Currently, I have to type
  > ~v every time.  Is there a way to do this?
  > ...

  Try putting a  'setenv EDITOR=/usr/bin/vi' (or whatever the path
  is) in your .login.  This should do it.
  
Nope.  Sorry, but this does *not* do it in any of the [mM]ail programs
I've ever run.  All that does is tell the mail program that when you
type "~e", you should get put into /usr/bin/vi to edit your mail message.

Upon closer reading of the original question, you can see that Mr.
Robinson was asking how he can automatically get put into 'vi' WITHOUT
having to type "~v" (or "~e", I presume).  As far as I know, there is
no way to do this in any of the [mM]ail programs I've seen.  I once
hacked up a private version of Mail to do this exact thing, but I was
at a site that had a BSD source license and I unfortunately was not
allowed to take my source code with me when I left.

If you really need this feature and you aren't totally sold on
[mM]ail, you might wish to investigate the following alternative
mailers: 'elm', 'mush', and 'mh'.

--
  Lloyd Zusman                          UUCP:   ...!ames!fxgrp!ljz
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