bin/1577: mail -f foo does not look in current directory of .mailrc has chdir

[A Joseph Koshy]

The following reply was made to PR bin/1577; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: A Joseph Koshy <ko...@india.hp.com>
To: freebsd-gn...@freebsd.org, s...@kithrup.com
Cc: p...@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: bin/1577: mail -f foo does not look in current directory of .mailrc has chdir
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 14:23:43 +0530

I just looked at PR bin/1577.

To me it seems that the behaviour of `mail' is consistent. Given that

(a) .mailrc (and the system RC files) are read in before anything else
is done

AND

(b) the RC files support most user commands including "chdir"

the behaviour of "-f" is what a user would expect.

Here is a patch to the documentation that specifies the startup behaviour,
for v1.15 of "/usr/src/usr.bin/mail/mail.1": (should patch cleanly in
both -STABLE and -CURRENT)

(In /usr/src/usr.bin/mail):
================================================
--- ./mail.1 Tue Apr 14 18:06:28 1998
+++ /tmp/mail.1 Fri Apr 17 14:29:10 1998
@@ -112,6 +112,23 @@
.Pp
.Dl mail -f /var/mail/user
.El
+.Ss Startup actions
+At startup time
+.Nm mail
+will execute commands in the system command files
+.Pa /usr/share/misc/mail.rc ,
+.Pa /usr/local/etc/mail.rc
+and
+.Pa /etc/mail.rc
+in order unless explicitly told not to by using the
+.Fl n
+option. Next, the commands in the users personal command file
+.Pa ~/.mailrc
+are executed.
+.Nm mail
+then examines its command line options to determine whether the user
+requested a new message to be sent or existing messages in a mailbox
+to be examined.
.Ss Sending mail
To send a message to one or more people,
.Nm mail
================================================


Regards,
Koshy <<My Personal Opinions Only>>

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