Subject: Help!

From: Shreedhar Reddy <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 17:53:05 -0500 (CDT)

Pine help,
	
	I need some help with Pine.  I am trying to get the "You have 10
messages", thing to work but I can't.  I am using a "bash" system I think.
I have tried putting this line in my ".bash_profile":
echo "You have "`grep -c 'Message-Id: ' $MAIL`" mail messages."
For the $MAIL, I have been using, "/var/spool/mail/mizar", this is where
I think that the INBOX is, but I am not sure.  I have tried lots of
different directories but none of them seem to work, I always end up
getting, "You have 0 mail messages".  Thank you for your help!

Sincerely,
[email-masked]

---

From: "Robin S. Socha" <[email-masked]>
Date: 21 Oct 1997 00:21:32 +0200

>> "SR" == Shreedhar Reddy <[email-masked]> writes:

SR> ".bash_profile": echo "You have "`grep -c 'Message-Id: ' $MAIL`"
SR> mail messages."  For the $MAIL, I have been using,
SR> "/var/spool/mail/mizar", 

*urgh* --> man biff... and that's ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile...

-- 
Robin S. Socha M.A.
Political Science Dept., Bonn University 
GMC d++ s+: a- C++ UL++ P++$>+++$ L++$>+++$ E+++ W-- N++ w--- O- M--
V-- PS--- PE+++ Y+ PGP++ t++ 5-- X-- tv++ b+++ DI++ D+ g e++ h r++ y+

---

From: Noone Special <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 08:38:53 -0500 (EST)

> echo "You have "`grep -c 'Message-Id: ' $MAIL`" mail messages."
That won't be accurate.
If someone replies to you and includes your headers, including your
"Message-Id: blah blah blah" header, it will add another count to your
message.. Actually, this message alone would be counted 4 times.. once for
each "Message-Id: " in it.

For instance, on my mail spool, your command gives me:
You have 51 mail message.  (Which is not correct.. I have 82)

Try:
echo "You have `grep -c '^From ' $MAIL` mail messages."

Notice I took out two sets of double quotes.  In the context here, they
aren't needed, and who knows, maybe they were messing something up.

> I think that the INBOX is, but I am not sure.  I have tried lots of
The general pathname for your mail spool is:
/var/spool/mail/username  where "username" is your username.
So if you are running this command on your account on ualr, you need to
use:
/var/spool/mail/snreddy