In Elm or Berkeley mail, how do I send a file?
Note: Elm is not available on any UITS systems.
To send a file in Elm or Berkeley mail, your file must be an ASCII file. If you wish to send a binary file, you must uuencode it first. For step by step instructions, see In Unix, how do I uuencode a binary file? Also, the Pine mailer has a distinct procedure for sending files. See In Pine, how do I attach a file to an email message? for details.
You have two options for sending files. You can send the file at the Unix prompt, or you can send a file while you are reading your mail.
Sending files from the Unix prompt
Whether you are using Elm or Berkeley mail, the procedure is the same: you need to redirect mail so that a file is used for input instead of the keyboard.
For Berkeley mail, at the Unix shell prompt, enter:
mailx -s "subject" username@address < myfile
For Elm, enter:
elm -s "subject" username@address < myfile
Replace subject with the subject line you want for the
message; replace username@address with the intended
recipient's email address; and replace myfile with the
name of the file you wish to send.
The -s option instructs the mailer to use the text
preceding the mail address as the subject of the message. Be sure to
enclose the subject in quotes if it contains more than one word. The
subject information may be omitted, but the recipient will then have
no description of the contents of the message. For example, the
following format is also valid:
elm user@machine < myfile
Note: Be careful to use < and not
>. If you use a >, the output of mail
will be redirected to the file, and the file will be over-written.
If you don't want to run the risk of getting > and
< confused, you may choose to use the following
command instead:
cat myfile | mailx -s "subject" username@address
or:
cat myfile | elm -s "subject" username@address
This redirects the output of cat to the input of
mail, producing the same effect as the previous examples.
Sending files when reading your mail
You always have the option of including a mail message using the editor within Berkeley mail or Elm. First, go through the normal procedure you take to send a message, so that you are in an editor and ready to compose a message. The steps you then take depend on the type of editor you are using.
To include a file when you are using Emacs to compose a
message, press Ctrl-x, then press i, and
enter the name of the file you wish to include.
In Pico, to include a file, press Ctrl-r and
enter the name of the file you wish to include.
In vi, to include a file, enter ex mode (press
:) and then enter:
r filename
Replace filename with the name of the file you wish to include.
At Indiana University, for personal or departmental Linux or Unix systems support, see At IU, how do I get support for Linux or Unix?
Last modified on August 22, 2008.
