[comp.mail.sendmail] mailing a mail folder

dcox@ssd.kodak.com (Don Cox) (04/11/91)

System: Sun

I am on numerous mailing lists in our organization and save
all of the postings in appropriate mail folders.  I would
like to be able to mail a newcomer to a list all of the
previous postings.  I found out that you can't mail a
mail folder:

# mail newperson < mail_folder
doesn't do anything.  I can mail the mail folder as a huge file by:

# cat mail_folder | mail newperson
but I would rather the posting were sent as individual messages.

(When I 'mail -f mail_folder', I can read the postings one at a
time.  I would like to be able to mail them in the same manner)
 
Is such a thing possible?  Does anyone know of any way to archive
articles from a mail list so that all of the previous postings can
be mailed to someone new to the list?  Thanks much.
-- 
                  Don Cox
Phone (716) 253-7121      KMX (716) 253-7998
INTERNET    dcox@ssd.kodak.com

oz@yunexus.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) (04/15/91)

dcox@ssd.kodak.com (Don Cox) writes:

># cat mail_folder | mail newperson
>but I would rather the posting were sent as individual messages.

There is a MailSplit program (circa 1986, by Russell Quin) that
will will break up a mail file into individual files. I will send
you a copy. I also include the man page for future reference.

oz
---
Not all good things come with three	 | internet: oz@nexus.yorku.ca
pages of dogma and an attitude. - anon   | uucp: utzoo/utai!yunexus!oz
---


MAILSPLIT(1L)     UNKNOWN SECTION OF THE MANUAL     MAILSPLIT(1L)



NAME
     mailsplit - split  a  file  or  mailbox  into  single  items
     (smaller files)

SYNOPSIS
     mailsplit [ -?  ]  [  -oformat  ]  [  -ppattern  ]  [  -n  ]
     [ file... ]

DESCRIPTION
     Mailsplit splits large files into smaller ones.  The  splits
     occur on lines that match a pattern , which defaults to
         ``^From ''
     so that the command
         mailsplit mbox
     will split a mail (1) format mail-box, putting each  message
     in a differnt file.

     Options are:

     -?   Print a summary of options.  Any  unknown  option  will
          also do this

     -p   The following string is taken to be  a  pattern  to  be
          used  to match input lines to determine points at which
          to split the input.  See ed (1) for details of the pat-
          terns.   The  pattern may contain newlines (which match
          themselves).

     -o   The folowing string is taken to be printf -style format
          to  be  used  in  the  generation  of output filenames.
          There should be a %d in the string, which will be  used
          to insert a disambiguating number.  This number is zero
          for the first file, and is incremented at the start  of
          each  output  file.  The -i option can be used to start
          the number with another value,  however.   The  default
          format is
              split:%-06.d
          which  results  in  files  having  names  split:000000,
          split:000001, split:000002, and so on.  Thus,
              mailsplit -o%d
          would produce files having the names 1, 2,  3,  and  so
          on.   The default format was chosen because the result-
          ing files are listed in numerical order by ls  (1),  or
          by
              echo *
          which is sometimes useful.

     -in  The number n will be used to number the first file; the
          number used each time will thereafter be incremented as
          normal.  See the -p option for the use of this.

     -nn  Split the input  every  n  lines.   In  this  case,  no
          pattern  matching  is performed.  This is the behaviour
          of split (1), except that mailsplit  normally  produced
          different filenames.

DIAGNOSTICS
     Mostly straight-forward.  ``Internal Error'' indicates a bug
     in  mailsplit  , and should be reported.  Exit staus 1 indi-
     cates an error parsing options - for example, if an  unknown
     flag  was ued.  Exit status 2 indicates a meaningless combi-
     nation was detected and rejected (this is rare in practice).
     Exit status 3 indicates a run-time problem - for example, if
     a file couldn't be opened.

SEE ALSO
     ed (1), mail (1), ls (1), split (1), printf (3).








































Sun Release 3.5        Last change: Local                       2

lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin) (04/17/91)

oz@yunexus.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:

> There is a MailSplit program (circa 1986, by Russell Quin) that
> will will break up a mail file into individual files.

Eeek!  I wrote that before I changed my name to Liam!  :-)  (1984, I think)

Note that mailers will convert "From_" lines to ">From" lines.

You should do one of the following
    sed 's/^From '/###From /' folder | Mail remoteuser
or, better, use shar.  Some mailer links won't like files over 64K, and
I suspect that others will die on 32767 bytes.
But this is getting a little far away from alt.sys.sun now...

Lee


-- 
Liam Russell Quin, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto... 416 963 8337... lee@sq.com
       `All that is necessary in the production of a book is an author and a
	bookseller, with no intermediate parasite.'
					George Bernard Shaw, letter, 1895