INCM(1)

💌 INCM(1) — the iconic little mail-grabber 💌

okay so bestie, welcome to the manual page for incm, from the General Commands Manual. She's a tiny Unix utility with main character energy and she has one job: pulling your new mail into Mew. Let's get into it. 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

incm — Incorporating new mails for Mew. That's it, that's the whole vibe. 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

incm [options]

No positional args, no drama, just options. Iconic. 👑

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So like, the incm utility incorporates new mails from either the mbox or the maildir and drops them into Mew's inbox folder. That's the whole plot. 🎀

The options are as follows:

• -a — Retrieve all mails from maildir/{cur,new} for maildir. Yes, all of them, bestie, even the ones just chillin'.
• -b — Backup mails. For mbox: No truncate mbox file. For maildir: To maildir/cur directory.
• -c — Use the Content-Length: field, instead of the "From " line, as a mail separator for mbox. (This one's your girl on Solaris, iykyk. 👀)
• -d path — Path to mbox/maildir. If path is a file, mbox is assumed. If path is a directory, maildir is assumed. She's flexible like that. 💁‍♀️
• -m path — The same as the -d option. Literally the same. Twins. 💕
• -s — Read one mail from stdin instead of mbox/maildir.
• -i inboxdir — A path to the inbox directory. 📥
• -u — Don't touch ".mew-mtime". Hands off, respectfully. 🙈
• -f — Preserve Unix From (Envelope Sender) line in mbox case.
• -p mode — Specify file mode that creates in mbox case.
• -o — Use the suffix when creating messages. ✨suffix era✨
• -x suffix — Use this suffix. (Yes, this is the suffix for the previous one, we love a duo.)
• -h — Display this help message. Bestie needs help sometimes, and that's okay. 🫂
• -v — Display the version. Number reveal moment. 🔢

📦 mbox

For mbox, the mail separator is "From " in the beginning of lines. The incm utility does not convert ">From " to "From " in the beginning of lines in the body. fr fr, it does not do this, do not expect it to. On Solaris, Content-Length: should be used with the -c option to tell the end of mail. 🛰️

To lock mbox, a lock file ("<user>.lock"), flock() or lockf(), and open(O_EXLOCK) are used. Three whole locking strategies, she's prepared. 💪

🎀 maildir

For maildir, no lock and no separator are necessary. Chillest format ever, no notes. 😌

Consider the following situation:

cur/{1,2}
new/{3,4}

Executing incm without the options results in:

cur/{1,2}
new/{}
to inbox: {3,4}

Executing incm with the -a option results in:

cur/{}
new/{}
to inbox: {1,2,3,4}

Executing incm with the -b option results in:

cur/{1,2,3,4}
new/{}
to inbox: {3,4}

Executing incm with the -a option and the -b option results in:

cur/{1,2,3,4}
new/{}
to inbox: {1,2,3,4}

So, if both options are specified, messages are retrieved multiple times. Not a bug, just the math, bestie — read that again before you spam both flags. 💀

gentle reminder: that last bit about -a + -b means duplicate retrieval. It's giving "oops, I did it twice". Plan accordingly. 🌸

and that's the whole page, gorgeous. this one's from the General Commands Manual, dated December 25, 2001 — yeah, she's a vintage queen and she still slays. 💜