Name

mailx

Synopsis

    mailx [options] [users]
    Mail [options] [users]

Read mail, or send mail to other users. For a summary of commands, type ? in command mode (e.g., when reading mail) or ~? in input mode (e.g., when sending mail). The start-up file .mailrc in the user’s home directory is useful for setting display variables and for defining alias lists.

Version Names

The original V7 Unix mail program provided a very spartan interactive user interface.[*] This inspired the creation of Berkeley Mail, a more capable mail-reading program for BSD Unix. Not surprisingly, and because Unix systems distinguish between uppercase and lowercase, the program was named Mail, and it lived in the /usr/ucb directory. When the System V developers imported Berkeley Mail, they renamed it mailx, to avoid the case-distinction problem. By that name the command was standardized in POSIX. Today, just to keep life interesting, different systems offer the program under multiple names and locations, as follows:

Solaris

The program is in /usr/bin/mailx. /usr/ucb/mail and /usr/ucb/Mail are symbolic links to it.

GNU/Linux

The program is in /bin/mail. /usr/bin/Mail is a symbolic link to it. There is no mailx command.

Mac OS X

The program is in /usr/bin/mailx. /usr/bin/mail is a hard link to it. Because the Mac OS X HFS filesystem ignores case, /usr/bin/Mail is the same as /usr/bin/mail (i.e., typing Mail at a shell prompt runs /usr/bin/mail).

Common Options

-b address

Send blind carbon copies to address. Quote the list ...

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