MAIL.vs.mh: less is more

[fostel at ncsu.UUCP]

    For some time I have manually extracted worthwhile items from my mail
    box and stored them as individual files to be operated on from the sh.
    Its transparently obvious that this is superior to special mail processors
    like mail -- to me anyway.  A number of years ago, just this sort of
    discussion was made at a UNIX conference (if memory serves the speaker
    was from Rand) and the collective yawn was punctuated primarily by a few
    people who ridiculed it for wasting disk space.  One thing that puzzles
    me about the use of things like "folders" in a mail systems is -- beyond
    the distinctly appealling name -- how does this differ from use of a sub-
    directory?  Is there some sort of cross-folder corrolation that would
    help in the case of single letters that would like to be in more than one
    folder?  (Always gave me gas in the paper world.)

    NOW, if indeed the era of sh driven mail may be dawning, how much longer
    will I have to wait for the same fate to befall make and ITS largely
    redundant command language?
    ----GaryFostel----