A Test Mail Setup
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I hate to experiment when I have folders full of important mail.
I've made another MH directory named Mail_test.
It has a duplicate set of files like replcomps, some folders
with useless messages, and so on.
Whenever I want to test commands, I edit my MH profile and change
the Path: entry to read:
Path: Mail_test
Until I change that entry back, MH commands use my Mail_test directory.
If I inc some messages that I want to keep, I just refile them
into my "real" MH directory with a command like:
% refile +$HOME/Mail/inbox
and read them after I change the Path: back.
Another way to change your MH setup is by defining the MH
environment variable.
If it's defined, MH will use it as the location of the MH profile
file -- otherwise, MH defaults to .mh_profile in your home directory.
You can make an MH profile with a name like tmpMHprofile in
your home directory and set it up however you want for testing.
Then, in the C shell, type the following command:
% setenv MH ~/tmpMHprofile
or in the Bourne shell:
$ MH=$HOME/tmpMHprofile
$ export MH
and your MH commands should use the alternate MH profile until you
log out or unset that environment variable.
CAUTION:
Some versions of xmh ignore the MH environment variable.
See Section Conflicts Between xmh and MH Customization for a workaround.
An easy way to make test messages is by linking to one message over and over.
This is easiest if you create a test folder, then change your shell's
current directory to it.
After that, use cp to copy in a test message from some other folder.
For example:
% folder +test
Create folder "/yourMHdir/test"? y
% cd `mhpath +test`
% pwd
/yourMHdir/test
% cp `mhpath cur +inbox` 100
% scan 100
100 04/01 Steven Dommer Re: meeting minutes<<> A while b
Be sure not to link this first message to the other folder (here, inbox).
That's because any changes you make to a link will appear in the original
message too!
Now you're ready to make your links to this test message.
The easiest way is with a shell loop (the Section
Sorting Messages: sortm
has another example).
Each shell has a different way to do this; for the C shell, see
the next Example.
Example: C shell loop to make 100 test messages
% @ num=1
% while ($num < 100)
? ln 100 $num
? echo made link $num
? @ num++
? end
made link 1
...
made link 99
%
The at sign (@) operator in
the Example above
is the C shell's way of doing arithmetic.
The command line @ num=1 sets $num to 1,
and @ num++ increments $num by one.
The loop makes the first link, adds 1 to num, then tests
to see if $num is still less than 100.
The links save filesystem space.
If you want individual copies instead of links, though, use cp
instead of ln.
The standard Bourne shell doesn't have built-in arithmetic.
To speed things up,
the Example below shows a tricky way to get
numbers from the Bourne shell without addition.
This set of nested loops does the same thing as the C shell loop above.
They're indented for clarity.
Example: Bourne shell nested loop to make 100 test messages
$ for t in "" 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
> do
> for o in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
> do
> ln 100 $t$o
> echo made link $t$o
> done
> done
made link 0
made link 1
...
made link 99
$ rm 0
The loop in the Example above
is a little messy, and the echo
command will slow it down if your shell doesn't have echo built in.
It has an outer loop that sets $t, the "tens" place.
The inner loop sets $o, the "ones" place.
The loops are messy because they create a link named 0 which
MH won't like; you can remove it with rm 0.
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