FLIST(1mh)

💖 FLIST(1mh) 💖

okay bestie, pull up a chair, we're talking flist and flists from nmh(1mh) and honestly? it's giving organizational queen energy 👑

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✨ NAME ✨

flist, flists — list the number of nmh messages in given sequences

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

flist [-help] [-version] [+folder1 [+folder2 ...]]  [-sequence name1
     [-sequence name2 ...]]  [-all | -noall] [-showzero | -noshowzero]
     [-recurse | -norecurse] [-fast | -nofast] [-alpha | -noalpha]

flists is equivalent to flist -all

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so like. flist is what you use to search a whole list of folders and show you how many messages in those folders are sitting in a given sequence or set of sequences (think the “unseen” sequence, the classic). this is especially useful if you've got some mechanism like slocal or procmail (usually vibing alongside rcvstore) pre-sorting your mail into different folders before you even look at it. set it and forget it, honestly 💅

by default, flist searches the current folder for the given sequence or sequences (usually “unseen”). but if you toss one or more folders on the command line with +folder — and yes you can do multiple — then all those folders get searched for the given sequence(s). for every folder it searches, flist shows you the number of messages in each of the specified sequences, plus the total number of messages. the receipts, bestie 📋

the -sequence switch says which sequence messages should belong to. you can drop this switch multiple times to specify multiple sequences. if you don't give it at all, the default is to search for all the sequences named by the “Unseen-Sequence” profile component. want the full lore on sequences? go read mh-sequence(5) 🫶

typically, flist will produce a line for each sequence, for every folder that gets searched — even the folders that have zero messages in that sequence. if you'd rather not see those, -noshowzero makes flist print only the folder/sequence combos where the folder actually has a non-zero number of messages in the given sequence. no empty plates at this table 🍽️

if -recurse is given, then for each folder that's searched, flist will also recursively descend into those folders to search subfolders for the given sequence. it's giving down the rabbit hole 🐇

if -fast is given, only the names of the folders searched get displayed, and flist suppresses all other output. and if you use this option together with -noshowzero? then flist will only print the names of those folders searched that contain messages in at least one of the specified sequences. minimalism, but make it functional ✨

🌈 Multiple Folders 🌈

if -all is given (and no folders are specified with +folder), then flist searches all the folders in the top level of the user's nmh directory. these folders are all preceded by the read-only folders, which show up as “atr-cur-” entries in the user's nmh context.

an example of the output of flist -all is:

/work/Mail  has  5 in sequence unseen (private); out of  46
inbox+      has 10 in sequence unseen          ; out of 153
junklist    has  0 in sequence unseen          ; out of  63
postmaster  has  1 in sequence unseen          ; out of   3

the “+” after inbox means it's the current folder. main character folder, obviously 👑

the “private” flag means the given sequence for that folder is private. mh-sequence(5) has the details on private sequences, go peek 🔍

if both -all and +folder are specified, then flist searches that folder and all its first level subfolders for the given sequence. and yes, you can specify multiple folders this way.

if flist is invoked by a name ending with “s” (like flists), then the -all switch is assumed by default. sneaky little name-based default, love that for us 💀

the sorting order for the listing is alphabetical (with -alpha), or in a priority order defined by the “Flist-Order” profile entry (with -noalpha). each item in “Flist-Order” is a folder name or a folder name pattern that uses * to match zero or more characters. longer matching patterns have precedence over shorter matching patterns. for example:

Flist-Order: personal petproject mh* * admin *junk

this order puts a few interesting folders first — like the ones with mail addressed to you personally, the ones about a pet project, and the ones about mh-related things. it puts uninteresting folders at the end, and it puts everything else in the middle in alphabetical order. a whole personality hierarchy for your mailboxes, iconic 🎀

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💜 FILES 💜

• $HOME/.mh_profile — The user's profile.

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⭐ PROFILE COMPONENTS ⭐

• Path: — To determine the user's nmh directory.
• mh-sequences: — File that contains public sequences.
• Unseen-Sequence: — The name of the unseen message sequence.
• Flist-Order: — To sort folders by priority.

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

folder(1), rcvstore(1), slocal(1), mh-sequence(5)

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🌸 DEFAULTS 🌸

• -sequence — The Unseen-Sequence profile entry.
• -showzero
• -noall
• -norecurse
• -noalpha
• -nofast

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🧚 CONTEXT 🧚

if +folder is given, it will become the current folder. and if multiple folders are given, the last one specified will become the current folder. last one standing wins, periodt 💅

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ngl bestie, that's the whole page. every flag, every folder, every sequence, no skips, no cap 💖

and that's a wrap! this lil gem is from nmh-1.8, dated 1999-04-30 — yeah she's vintage, and she still ate 🫶✨