If you have mail, mailx notifies you each time you log in with the message
You have mail
or
You have new mail
To read your messages, type mailx at a command prompt and press Return. If no mail is waiting for you, you will see the message:
No mail for username
Otherwise, you see a list similar to the following:
$ mailx Mail version 4.0 Thu Jan 16 12:59:09 PST 1992 Type ? for help. “/var/mail/rose”: 4 messages 1 new 2 unread 1 rose@texas Fri Feb 14 12:01 21/453 to someone who U 2 hank@fretful Fri Feb 14 18:31 19/353 so lonely I U 3 farmer@freeway Sat Feb 15 10:22 24/557 looks like my >N 4 hoover@woofer Sun Feb 16 23:59 14/280 big old furry & |
The mailx program displays information about itself (version number and date) and instructions for getting help (Type ? for help).
On the next line, mailx specifies the location of your mailbox, the number of messages received, and their status.
Next, mailx shows a numbered list of the messages in your mailbox. From left to right, the columns in each line specify:
Status: Indicates whether a message is new (N), unread (U), or read (no symbol). A “>” at the beginning of a line indicates the current message. Deleted messages are marked with an asterisk (*).
Number: Indicates the order in which message was received.
Sender: Indicates the name of the user (and usually machine) the message came from.
Time: Indicates the date and time the message was sent.
Size: Indicates the number of lines or the number of characters in message.
Subject: Indicates the sender-designated subject of the message.
When you have several messages in your mailbox, the displayed list might not show all of your mail. If this situation applies, type:
To view the current message in the mailbox list (marked with >), press Return. Press Return again to display the next message. To read any message in the list, type its number and press Return.