A User's Directories
Much of the Figure Important parts
of a UNIX filesystem shows the directories for a user
named ehuser. The home directory /u/ehuser holds
the MH Profile. The Mail directory
and its subdirectories are for MH.
If the user wants any shell scripts or other
programs, bin holds them.
The gray arrow pointing out of
the bin directory is a symbolic link named
replx. It points to
the executable repl program in the MH binaries directory.
ehuser also has a shell program named
fols in her bin.
The MH directory (named Mail in this
example) has two subdirectories. MH uses these directories as mail
folders; there might be many more of them. The MH directory also
has several files; some are explained here and others are covered
in later chapters.
- Drafts
-
When you make a new draft message, MH
stores the draft in a file in the MH directory. The draft file
is named (logically enough) draft.
Alternatively, MH can make a folder for
holding many draft messages. This folder is called (are you
ready?) a draft folder. The
Section Working with Draft
Messages covers drafts in detail.
- Library Files
-
The Mail directory has ehuser's private version of
the
components and mhl.format files, which MH will use
instead of the corresponding file in the MH library directory.
There's also a replxfilt filter file for the
replx command
(which is in her bin).
- Context File
-
Each user's MH directory has its own context file. This
file keeps track of your current folder and private sequences.
If you've used any read-only folders (another user's folders,
for instance), all information about them is stored here.
- Folders
-
A folder (such as the people folder in the
Figure Important parts of a UNIX
filesystem) has one text file for each message in the
folder. The name of the message file is the message number. So
the people folder has two messages in it, numbers 1 and
2. (There can be other messages, but they aren't shown in the
diagram.)
The files whose names start with commas
are "deleted" messages. File ,6 in
the people/friends folder is an example. The rmm
command prepends a comma to the filename (some systems use other
characters). This "hides" the message from MH commands, but
gives you a chance to recover the deleted message. At a later
time, a system program normally removes "deleted" messages. This
is covered in the Section
Removing and Recovering Messages.
- .mh_sequences
-
In each folder (and subfolder), an .mh_sequences file
keeps track of the sequences in the folder. (More
exactly, public sequences are stored
in .mh_sequences.
Private sequences are kept in the context file.)
Sequences are the lists of
message numbers that you set with commands like
mark and pick. There's a sequence
called cur that holds the current message number,
an unseen sequence that lists unread messages, and more.
- Subfolders
-
The people folder has
two subfolders
named friends and
colleagues. Each of these subfolders has the same
structure as people. They both have .mh_sequences
files for themselves. They can even have subfolders... and
sub-sub-subfolders. (But note that
xmh under X11 Release 6 only recognizes one level of
subfolders. If you happen to have sub-sub...folders, xmh
will ignore them. The X11 Release 3 version doesn't handle
subfolders at all.) The only difference between a folder and
subfolder is the name; see the
Section Relative Folder
Names for more information.