Getting started with mailx

The commands are similar to mail . For example: mailx user@host.domain or mailx aliasname

Type the message text, terminate and send your message with <Ctrl-d> or with a last line containing a single . (period) in column one.

Mail a file:
mailx -s "subject" recipient-address < filename

Reading, forwarding, replying, filing, sorting and editing mail are done inside the mail utility. Invoke:
mailx
then use any of the following subcommands:

 
 m        		 send mail, invoke editor

 h        		 header displays list of messages
             in your mailbox

 ?        		 help

 d        		 delete current message

 e        		 edit the current message

 [n]    		 read message number [n]

 [-]      		 read previous message

 s        		 save current message in
             personal mailbox

 s file   		 save current message
             to file

 s [n] file 		  save message number [n] 
             to file

 c [n][file] 		 same as s but do not
             delete message from 
             incoming mailbox

 r       		 reply to current message

 a       		 display aliases

 a hd    		 display alias hd

 q       		 quit mail, discard
             deleted messages

 x       		 quit mail, do not
             discard deleted 
             messages

Note: Ultrix, HP-UX and AIX use r to reply to all the people contained within the To and CC: lists and R to reply to the sender only. In SunOs the reverse occurs. However, the man pages on the different systems correctly describe the behaviour on the different systems.

By default mail uses the vi editor. Insert a line

set EDITOR=/usr/local/bin/emacs

into your $HOME/.mailrc file to change the default editor to emacs.
If you want to work with your personal mailbox instead of the system mailbox, type mailx -f .

Work with an arbitrary mail folder is started as

mailx -f filename