showpartial(1)

🎀 showpartial(1) 🎀

ok so this is a page from the General Commands Manual, and we're talking about showpartial today bestie, buckle up 💅

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✨ NAME ✨

showpartial — fetch and display the body of a mail message that's included by reference 🫶

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

showpartial file id partnum totalnum

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so here's the vibe: showpartial will squirrel away 🐿️ the body of a MIME-format message that's of type message/partial, and it stashes it for later use. lowkey a little hoarder, but make it functional.

when it gets called on the last piece, it'll put all the pieces together and call metamail to display the full message. slay, assembly complete ✨

it's intended to be called by metamail via a mailcap entry like this one:

message/partial; showpartial %s %{id} %{number} %{total}

⚠️ okay important warning bestie: the parts are squirrelled away on /tmp, which means /tmp can fill up if you never get the remaining parts 😭 like fr fr, if the rest of the message never shows up, that directory is just gonna keep collecting your little partial-message crumbs forever.

when the message is finally displayed, via metamail, the parts are all discarded, and the user is asked whether or not to delete the file containing the entire message. so it's polite about it 🎀

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• metamail(1)

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

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.

💀 yeah that's the legal bit, no cap, don't come for me, it's giving "read it and weep" but also it's giving "here's your permission slip" 🫶

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🌸 AUTHOR 🌸

Nathaniel S. Borenstein, Bellcore 💜

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and that's the whole page bestie!! this one's Release 1 of showpartial(1) — iconic, legendary, 1991 energy, no date on the footer but we love her anyway 🦋✨🎀