showexternal(1)

📦 version 2.7.19, in opensuse-leap 16.0

🦋 showexternal(1) — bestie manual moment 🦋

okay so this is the showexternal(1) page, straight from the General Commands Manual, and it's giving "fetch the real body of a mail message that was included by reference" energy. Let's get into it 💅

💌 NAME 💌

  • showexternal — fetch and display the body of a mail message that is included by reference.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

showexternal  body-file access-type name [site [directory [mode [server]]]]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

The showexternal program will attempt to obtain the real body of a mail message that is included only by reference, using the MIME type "message/external-body". It is intended to be called by metamail via a mailcap entry like the following:

message/external-body; showexternal %s %{access-type} %{name} %{site} %{directory} %{mode} %{server} ; needsterminal

If it succeeds in fetching the message body, showexternal will then call metamail to actually display it. iconic behavior, honestly.

🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

The FTP environment variable can override "ftp" as the name of the ftp program. so if your ftp program is not literally called "ftp", that's the little override knob 🫶

💀 BUGS 💀

Not the greatest error handling in the world.

yeah, that's the official bug note. it's short, it's real, it's not trying to sugarcoat anything 💀

okay legal time, bestie — here's the exact copyright/license text, no edits:

Copyright (c) 1991 Bell Communications Research, Inc. (Bellcore) Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this material for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies, and that the name of Bellcore not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to this material without the specific, prior written permission of an authorized representative of Bellcore. BELLCORE MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE ACCURACY OR SUITABILITY OF THIS MATERIAL FOR ANY PURPOSE. IT IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES.

👑 AUTHOR 👑

  • Nathaniel S. Borenstein, Bellcore — the author, slaying in the credits.

💖 that's the whole showexternal(1) page! source/version footer says Release 1, and the date is not listed on this page — mysterious, honestly. bye bestie, go fetch that external body with main character energy 🦋✨

📦 where this page comes from