From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 16:50:54 +0800
To: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <markm@voicenet.com
Subject: Re: Mixmaster version usable with POP?
Message-ID: <199605280529.WAA04756@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 12:44 AM 5/27/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:
>From:	IN%"markm@voicenet.com"  "Mark M." 26-MAY-1996 18:46:13.23
>
>>On Linux this works:
>>popclient -3 -c POPHOSTNAME | formail -s mixmaster -R >> $MAIL
>
>>It will work on any system that has formail and popclient on it.
>
>	Is this only for getting mail, or also for sending it? Sorry, I'm
>not very familiar with UNIX, especially the pipe commands.

A pipe takes the standard output of the program on the left-hand side
and feeds it to the standard input of the program on the right.
On Real Operating Systems, like Unix, both programs are running at once,
so the pipe doesn't need to buffer very much information; MS-DOS fakes
it out by running the first command while dumping its output in a temp file,
then running the second command with its input from the temp file.

A program named "popclient" is almost certainly designed for fetching
mail from a Post Office Protocol server, which keeps a mailbox for you.
I'm don't know what "formail" does, but it's presumably going to crunch
your newly fetched mail through mixmaster to send it out.  (A not unreasonable
guess for what it does is to take a bunch of mail from standard input
(e.g. the output of popclient) and crunch each mail message according to
the options on the command line, for instance filing it, prettyprinting it,
or whatever.)


So this is a remailer.  To just send mail, you'd use mixmaster.
#					Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215
# goodtimes signature virus innoculation