Re: [bug-mailutils] mail -f option processing

[Helmut Leitner]

Sergey Poznyakoff wrote:
> Helmut Leitner <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>
> > The program "mail" seems to process the -f option incorrectly.
> > In a call
> >   mail -f path name
> > or
> >   mail name
> >     (with "-f path" coming from /etc/mailutils.rc ":mail -f path")
> > the name is interpreted as another mailbox path and the
> > stored path is overwritten and lost.
>
>
> The switch -f takes an optional argument. As such, it must eiter appear
> right after the short form (-f), or after an equal sign if used with the
> long form (--file), in both cases without any intervening
> whitespace. That is, the correct ways of invocation are:
>
>   mail -fpath
>   mail --file=path
>
> Any other usage is an error and previous versions of mail detected it as
> such. However, as the comment you noticed states, people were often
> forgetting this option specific and therefore an heuristics was
> introduced that allows to handle both  `mail -fpath' and `mail -f path'
> the same way *in the absence of other command line arguments*.
>
> It did not appear to me that anyone would want to use both mailbox name
> and recipient addresses on the same command line, since this is
> effectively senseless. The invocation
>
>   mail -f path name
>
> should be understood as follows: "set default mailbox url to the system
> mailbox for the current uid and enter compose mode for sending a message
> to users `path' (sic) and `name'". Currently, however, mail understands
> it as "open `path', than drop it and open `name' instead". The proposed
> way of understanding this invocation as "open mailbox `path' and send a
> mail to `name'" is also wrong, since `path' has nothing to do with -f,
> because it is separated from it. Perhaps the best bet would be to print
> an error message and exit. 

I just want to set maildir format and "~/maildir" as the
default path for all operations of mailutils.

I tried to set corresponding options in mailutils.rc
Together with mailutils 0.6 I used:
  :mailutils --maildir
  :messages -f~/maildir

This effectively creates a
  mail -f~/maildir name
parameter situation when calling
  mail name
from the command line, even when this is neither needed nor intended.

These are the affected case-sections of mail.c/pars_opt:

    case 'f':
      if (arg != NULL)
        args->file = arg;
      else
        {
          int len;
          char *home = getenv("HOME");
          len = strlen (home) + strlen ("/mbox") + 1;
          args->file = xmalloc(len * sizeof (char));
          strcpy (args->file, home);
          strcat (args->file, "/mbox");
        }
      break;

    case ARGP_KEY_ARG:
      /* People often tend to separate -f option from its argument
         with a whitespace. This heuristics tries to catch the
         error: */

      if (args->file)
        {
          args->file = arg;
        }
      else
        {
          args->args = realloc (args->args,
                                sizeof (char *) * (state->arg_num + 2));
          args->args[state->arg_num] = arg;
          args->args[state->arg_num + 1] = NULL;
          util_cache_command (&command_list, "set mode=send");
        }
      break;

My working case-sections of mail.c/pars_opt are:

    case 'f':
      if (arg != NULL)
        args->file = arg;
      else if(state->argv[state->next][0] >= '-')
        {
          args->file = state->argv[state->next++];
        }
      else
        {
          int len;
          char *home = getenv("HOME");
          len = strlen (home) + strlen ("/mbox") + 1;
          args->file = xmalloc(len * sizeof (char));
          strcpy (args->file, home);
          strcat (args->file, "/mbox");
        }
      break;


    case ARGP_KEY_ARG:
      args->args = realloc (args->args,
                        sizeof (char *) * (state->arg_num + 2));
      args->args[state->arg_num] = arg;
      args->args[state->arg_num + 1] = NULL;
      util_cache_command (&command_list, "set mode=send");
      break;

Things even seem to get simpler by resolving this issue.

But this is minor. Basically I just want
  "maildir:~/maildir for everyutil and everyuser".
and have at least mail, pop3d and imap4d work with that.

How can I configure that?

--
Helmut Leitner    address@hidden
Graz, Austria   www.hls-software.com