The /usr/bin/mail program on *nix

[Joseph Moran]

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003, Jeremy Portzer wrote:

> Joseph Mack and Joseph Moran recently had a conversation about MTAs; I
> forgot to check my NC*SA folder and didn't see it until now.
>
> Anyway, I wanted to point something out about the /usr/bin/mail program,
> sometimes referred to as "mailx."  I believe the operation of this
> program has been misunderstood.

[snip]

Oh, thank you very much for the correction.  I'm not sure if I never knew
that 'mail' was a front-end to the local MTA or had just forgotten (I
think the former).  The only thing I'll add is that 'mail' and 'mailx' are
usually separate programs, with 'mailx' being the more featureful of the
two.  Lots of older Unix systems have 'mail' but not 'mailx'.  On new
systems, I wouldn't be surprised if 'mail' was just a link to 'mailx'.
To be honest, I no longer use either of them.

-jrm