Checking new mail in programs

[Jonathan I. Kamens]

In article <2722 at draken.nada.kth.se>, perand at nada.kth.se (Per Andersson)
writes:
> I am writing a program similar to 'finger'. In fact I took finger and 
> ripped out the parts I didn't need. But I don't know how to check if
> the user has mail/new mail. The SunOS finger program does this, but
> I only have source to BSD4.3. Also I have a system V variant, but that
> has to be setuid to root, and that is out of the question. Suns is an
> ordinary program so it can be done. What approach should I take ?

  This code is untested, but should do just about the right thing, or at
least show you how to do it.  I got the general idea of how to do this
from the sources to our login program.

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>

/*
 * assumes that mail directory is /usr/spool/mail, and that usernames are never
 * longer than eight characters.
 */
char mailfile[25];
struct stat statbuf;
char *username;

/*
 * somewhere above this code fragment, the variable username should be set.
 */

sprintf(mailfile, "/usr/spool/mail/%s", username);
if ((stat(mailfile, &statbuf) == 0) && statbuf.st_size != 0)
   printf("You have %smail.\n",
          (statbuf.st_mtime > statbuf.st_atime) ? "new " : "");

Jonathan Kamens			              USnail:
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