Mailpath notification message

Mailpath notification message

[Rusty Hoover]

Shouldn't this line:

	export MAILPATH="~/.mailspool/rusty:~/Mail/z?Zsh mail."

			in my .zshenv give me, whenever i return to my
command-line prompt, the message: "Zsh mail." ?

It doesn't. What am i doing wrong? Do i need spaces around the question
mark?

>From the zsh man:

 mailpath (MAILPATH) An array (colon-separated list) of filenames to check
                for new mail.  Each filename can be followed by a ? and a
                message that will be printed. The message will undergo
                parameter expansion, command substitution and arithmetic
                substitution with the variable $_ defined as the name of the
                file that has changed. The default message is "You have new
                mail." If an element is a directory instead of a file the
                shell will recursively check every file in every
                subdirectory of the element.


-- 
  Rusty Hoover
  rusty@panix.com
  mqw@inch.com
  rjh@well.com

Re: Mailpath notification message

[Jason L Tibbitts III]

>>>>> "RH" == Rusty Hoover <rusty@panix.com> writes:

RH> It doesn't. What am i doing wrong? Do i need spaces around the question
RH> mark?

I struggled with this for a little while, and came up with the following:

mailpath=(
  /var/mail/tibbs\?'New unfiltered mail.'
  ~/Mail/spool\?'New spooled mail: ${${_%.spool}#/home/tibbs/Mail/spool/}.'
)

I have something like fifty mail spools, each looking like
/home/tibbs/spool/zsh.spool.  This will report "New unfiltered mail" for
mail in the system spool directory, and will extract the name of the spool
form the other spool directories.
-- 
      Jason L. Tibbitts III - tibbs@uh.edu - 713/743-8684 - 221SR1
System Manager:  University of Houston High Performance Computing Center
                1994 PC800 "Kuroneko"      DoD# 1723

Re: Mailpath notification message

[Peter Stephenson]

Rusty Hoover wrote:
> Shouldn't this line:
> 
> 	export MAILPATH="~/.mailspool/rusty:~/Mail/z?Zsh mail."
> 
> 			in my .zshenv give me, whenever i return to my
> command-line prompt, the message: "Zsh mail." ?
> 
> It doesn't. What am i doing wrong? Do i need spaces around the question
> mark?

The mistake is that the ~'s are quoted, so don't expand to your home
directory: try `echo ~ "~"' and you will see what I mean.  You need
something like:

export MAILPATH=~/.mailspool/rusty:~/Mail/z'?Zsh mail.'

(zsh does know about assignments and colons when expanding ~'s).  This
is partly my fault:  I had something in the FAQ when the shell was
rationalised to quote tildes in this sort of place, but deleted it
when I thought it was no longer necessary.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@ifh.de>       Tel: +49 33762 77366
WWW:  http://www.ifh.de/~pws/       Fax: +49 33762 77413
Deutches Electronen-Synchrotron --- Institut fuer Hochenergiephysik Zeuthen
DESY-IfH, 15735 Zeuthen, Germany.

Re: Mailpath notification message

[Duncan Sargeant]

Peter Stephenson scribbled:
> 
> Rusty Hoover wrote:
> > Shouldn't this line:
> > 
> > 	export MAILPATH="~/.mailspool/rusty:~/Mail/z?Zsh mail."
> > 
> > 			in my .zshenv give me, whenever i return to my
> > command-line prompt, the message: "Zsh mail." ?
> > 
> > It doesn't. What am i doing wrong? Do i need spaces around the question
> > mark?
> 
> The mistake is that the ~'s are quoted, so don't expand to your home
> directory: try `echo ~ "~"' and you will see what I mean.  You need
> something like:
> 
> export MAILPATH=~/.mailspool/rusty:~/Mail/z'?Zsh mail.'
> 
> (zsh does know about assignments and colons when expanding ~'s).  This
> is partly my fault:  I had something in the FAQ when the shell was
> rationalised to quote tildes in this sort of place, but deleted it
> when I thought it was no longer necessary.
> 

I usually overcome this problem by using $HOME in my scripts.  I
think this is a better way because you can put it in the middle of
double-quote quoted strings (but not single quotes.)

export MAILPATH="$HOME/mailspool/rusty:$HOME/Mail/z?Zsh mail."

IMHO its a good habit to get into.

better understand parameter expansion??

echo $HOME "$HOME" '$HOME' ~ "~" '~'

/home/wheel/dunc /home/wheel/dunc $HOME /home/wheel/dunc ~ ~


PS: what was the rationale behind quoting tildes?  Not critising
    it, but this means it isn't a short parameter ... so what is
    it?


cheers,

dunc

-- 
Duncan Sargeant, http://www.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au/~dunc/
D2: "Are you thinking what I'm thinking, D1?"
D1: "I think I am, D2!"
D1 and D2: "Free Tibet!"                    -- "Dalai Lamas in Pyjamas", GNW.

Re: Mailpath notification message

[Peter Stephenson]

Duncan Sargeant wrote:
> PS: what was the rationale behind quoting tildes?  Not critising
>     it, but this means it isn't a short parameter ... so what is
>     it?

Since it operates on filenames, it's a bit more like globbing than
like parameters, though it's not quite that either --- you can quote ~
just like you can quote *.  I think POSIX has some words on the
subject so that the current semantics is unlikely to change.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@ifh.de>       Tel: +49 33762 77366
WWW:  http://www.ifh.de/~pws/       Fax: +49 33762 77413
Deutches Electronen-Synchrotron --- Institut fuer Hochenergiephysik Zeuthen
DESY-IfH, 15735 Zeuthen, Germany.

Re: Mailpath notification message

[Nate Johnston]

Quite a while ago, there was a person asking how to string long lines into
his MAILPATH.  This is (approximately) what was written as an answer,
perhaps by Mr. Stephenson (if I remember truly).

setopt magic_equal_subst                # for `export foo=~/bar`
function export() { EXPORT=${1%%\=*} ; typeset -Ux $* }
function +() { eval builtin export ${EXPORT}=\$\{$EXPORT\}:\$1 }
# some stuff snipped
export MAILPATH=        "~/mail/in/inbox?Mail in folder 1"
                +       "~/.samizdat/in/inbox?Mail in filder 2"
# more snipped 
unfunction export +

This used to work for me.  Now however, I get the message that the second
one (~/.samizdat..etc) is not an identifier.  I am puzzled, as I loved
this little tool to work on my many mail spools.  How might this be made
to work? 

This is zsh 3.0.0
                                            --N.

Re: Mailpath notification message

[Bart Schaefer]

On Nov 5,  3:13pm, Nate Johnston wrote:
} Subject: Re: Mailpath notification message
}
} Quite a while ago, there was a person asking how to string long lines into
} his MAILPATH.  This is (approximately) what was written as an answer,
} perhaps by Mr. Stephenson (if I remember truly).

Nope, it was me.

} setopt magic_equal_subst                # for `export foo=~/bar`
} function export() { EXPORT=${1%%\=*} ; typeset -Ux $* }
} function +() { eval builtin export ${EXPORT}=\$\{$EXPORT\}:\$1 }
} # some stuff snipped
} export MAILPATH=        "~/mail/in/inbox?Mail in folder 1"
}                 +       "~/.samizdat/in/inbox?Mail in filder 2"
} # more snipped 
} unfunction export +
} 
} This used to work for me.  Now however, I get the message that the second
} one (~/.samizdat..etc) is not an identifier.

The first export has to look like a real variable assignment:

export MAILPATH="~/mail/in/inbox?Mail in folder 1"
	+	"~/.samizdat/in/inbox?Mail in filder 2"

It was never supposed to work with spaces after the `=' sign; that it ever
did was because of poor parsing in eariler versions of zsh.

Also, putting quotes around the leading `~' protects that from expansion
even with magic_equal_subst set, so the eventual value of the variable is:

    ~/mail/in/inbox?Mail in folder 1:~/.samizdat/in/inbox?Mail in filder 2

Which I *think* works for $MAILPATH but would not work for $PATH etc.  It
would be better to say (note position of the quotes):

export MAILPATH=~/mail/in/inbox"?Mail in folder 1"
	+	~/.samizdat/in/inbox"?Mail in filder 2"

Finally, what's a filder? ;->

-- 
Bart Schaefer                             Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts            http://www.nbn.com/people/lantern

Re: Mailpath notification message

[Dan Nelson]

In the last eposode (Nov 5), Bart Schaefer said:
> On Nov 5,  3:13pm, Nate Johnston wrote:
> } setopt magic_equal_subst                # for `export foo=~/bar`
> } function export() { EXPORT=${1%%\=*} ; typeset -Ux $* }
> } function +() { eval builtin export ${EXPORT}=\$\{$EXPORT\}:\$1 }
> } # some stuff snipped
> } export MAILPATH=        "~/mail/in/inbox?Mail in folder 1"
> }                 +       "~/.samizdat/in/inbox?Mail in filder 2"
> } # more snipped 
> } unfunction export +

That looks.. weird :)  I would rather keep sh-style syntax myself, plus
a notation easy for novices to use.

Here is a set of functions based around elm's "frm" command.  In
addition to "You have new Z-Shell" mail messages generated by the
mailpath variable, the frm command prints an extra line for every
mailbox with messages in it:

You have no mail.
You have 5 messages from the Z-Shell listserv.

I know only enough about zsh's variable substitution to be dangerous,
so my functions might be affected by setopt's I don't know about.

	-Dan Nelson
	dnelson@emsphone.com


To use, put these two functions in .zshenv ( or /etc/zshenv):

---.zshenv---

# _subfrm: Counts messages in a mailbox.  Argument 1 is the path of the
# mailbox.  Argument 2 is assumed to be a string of the form "You have
# new #### mail.".  The 2nd word from the right is pulled out and
# included in the message count.  No message is printed if the mailbox
# size is 0.  Messages are counted by grepping for "From " at the
# beginning of a line.  MMDF users might want to search for ^A's.
_subfrm()
{
	if [[ -s $@[1] ]] ; then 
		local msg
		msg=(${=@[2]})
		echo "You have" $(grep -c "^From " $@[1]) "messages from the $msg[4,-2] listserv."
	else

	fi
}

# frm: Parses the ZSH mailpath to print number of messages in each
# mailbox.  Skips the first entry, which is assumed to be the user's
# main mailbox (handled by the real frm command).  Each array element
# after that is passed to _subfrm.
frm()
{
	local i
	command frm

	for i in $mailpath[2,-1]
		_subfrm ${(s/?/)i}
	true
	# This is here so that frm() always returns success
	# The picky will want to save the result of "command frm" and
	# return that.
}
---.zshenv---

And add these to .zprofile or .zlogin:

---.zprofile---

# Addfrm:  Appends a mailbox to the zsh mailpath array.  Argument 1 is
# the path to the mailbox.  Argument 2 is a single word describing the
# list.  Don't quote this to put spaces in it, as _subfrm splits on
# spaces to extract the description from $mailpath.
addfrm()
{
	if [[ -z $@[2] ]] ; then
		mailpath=($mailpath $@[1])
	else
		mailpath=($mailpath $@[1]"?You have new "$@[2]" mail.")
	fi
}

export MAILPATH=/var/mail/$USER
addfrm ~/Mail/zsh Z-Shell
# Add other mailboxes here

unfunction addfrm
#don't need it any more
---.zprofile---