sortmail(1)sortmail(1)NAMEsortmail - sort email messages by date/time
SYNOPSISsortmail [ -chHmMyYrRvx ] mbox...
DESCRIPTIONsortmail is a front end for decomposemail(1) and recomposemail(1).
Each mailbox argument is disassembled into its component messages, then
these messages are reassembled into new mailboxes based on command line
selection criteria. Some additional functionality is provided, such as
backup copies, recursion, etc.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-c Move current month mailbox back to original mailbox, implies
-r (for use with -m, -M, -y, or -Y).
-h Help, just print an informational message, and exit.
-H Here, do work in the current directory instead of in
./SM_WORK.
-m Sort to monthly mailboxes of type mbox.YYMM.
-M Sort to monthly mailboxes of type YYMM/mbox.
-y Sort to yearly mailboxes of type mbox.YYYY.
-Y Sort to yearly mailboxes of type YYYY/mbox. With -m, sort to
mailboxes of type YYYY/mbox.MM. With -M, sort to mailboxes
of type YYYY/MM/mbox.
-r Remove (replace) the original mailbox after sorting.
-R Recurse, redo any appended mailboxes (for use with -m, -M,
-y, or -Y).
-v Verbose, even more messages.
-x Don't make any backup copies in ./SM_BACKUP.
OPERANDS
The following operands are supported:
mbox The name (with optional path) of a standard Internet style
mailbox file.
USAGEsortmail can help to organize saved email for archival and retrieval
purposes. Messages are sorted by date/time, then reassembled into new
mailboxes. A notable feature is the ability to separate the messages
into monthly or yearly mailboxes.
The default behavior is to take each mbox (mailbox) argument, make a
backup copy, make a working copy, decompose it into individual message
files, and then recompose the messages ordered by date in increasing
order.
With the -m flag, the messages are reassembled into separate files per
month, mbox.YYMM; for example, “mlist.9801”. With the -M flag, the
messages are reassembled into separate files per month in subdirecto‐
ries, YYMM/mbox; for example, “9801/mlist”. With the -y flag, the mes‐
sages are reassembled into separate files per year, mbox.YYYY; for
example, “mlist.1998”. With the -Y flag, the messages are reassembled
into separate files per year in subdirectories, YYYY/mbox; for example,
“1998/mlist”. If -Y is combined with -m, the messages are reassembled
into separate files per month in yearly subdirectories, YYYY/mbox.MM;
for example, “1998/mlist.01”. If -Y is combined with -M, the messages
are reassembled into separate files per month in yearly and monthly
subdirectories, YYYY/MM/mbox; for example, “1998/01/mlist”. In any of
these cases, any such pre-existing mailboxes will be appended. If any
such pre-existing mailboxes are compressed (.Z or .gz), they will first
be uncompressed, and then recompressed after being modified.
With the -c flag (along with -m, -M, -y, or -Y), the mbox file for the
current month (if any) will be renamed as the original mbox.
With the -R flag (along with -m, -M, -y, or -Y), when a month file is
combined with one that already exists, the resulting file will be
resorted.
With the -H flag, all work is done in the current directory instead of
in ./SM_WORK. This reduces the usefulness of some of the other
options, and is a bit riskier. (Also known as “the gonzo option”.)
By default, all work is done in a subdirectory ./SM_WORK, and all files
to be modified are backed up in a subdirectory ./SM_BACKUP. These sub‐
directories are created if they don't already exist. These are not
cleaned up after sorting, though none of the temporary message files or
sort files should remain.
Much of this can be accomplished using decomposemail(1) and recompose‐
mail(1) directly, but many more manual steps are required.
EXAMPLES
Sort the messages in the mailbox “mail/CERT”, not making a backup copy
in ./SM_BACKUP, and rename the new sorted mailbox to the original mail‐
box. Without -r, the new mailbox would remain in “./SM_WORK”:
sortmail-xr mail/CERT
Sort the messages in the mailbox “FreeBSD”, separating messages by
month into mailboxes like “FreeBSD.9801”, “FreeBSD.9802”, etc. The
original mailbox will be overwitten with any messages for the current
month:
sortmail-mc FreeBSD
Sort the messages in the mailboxes “maya” and “jim”, separating mes‐
sages by month into mailboxes in subdirectories like “9801/maya”,
“9801/jim”, “9802/maya”, “9802/jim”, etc. Any such pre-existing mail‐
boxes that are appended will also be resorted:
sortmail-MR maya jim
Sort the messages in the mailbox “yada”, separating messages by month
into mailboxes in subdirectories like “1998/01/yada”, “1998/02/yada”,
etc. Any such pre-existing mailboxes that are appended will also be
resorted, and the original mailbox will be overwitten with any messages
for the current month:
sortmail-YMcR yada
FILES
./SM_BACKUP Directory where sortmail makes a backup copy of each
mailbox before sorting it.
./SM_WORK Directory where sortmail does its work: makes a temporary
copy of each mbox, and a serialized file for each mes‐
sage.
mbox.YYYYMMDD.hhmmss.nnnnn
Temporary serialized files for each individual message in
a mailbox, where “mbox” is the name of the mailbox,
“YYYYMMDD” is the year, month, and day, “hhmmss” is the
hour, minute, and second, and “nnnnn” is a serialization
number. These will be created in the ./SM_WORK direc‐
tory, unless the -H flag is specified.
DIAGNOSTICS
Returns 0 if no problems encountered.
Returns non-zero for any errors encountered.
BUGSsortmail is a shell script that uses the filesystem for sorting. It is
slow.
Due to copies made during the sorting process, you should have enough
additional space in your current partition and/or quota to hold three
full copies of each original mbox.
sortmail is quite verbose, even without the -v option. A quiet option
should be added.
Data at the beginning of a mailbox that does not appear to be part of
an email message will be silently discarded.
sortmail creates working directories and backup copies of mailboxes,
and does not clean up after itself (except as noted above).
sortmail relies on the scripts decomposemail(1) and recomposemail(1).
This is either a bug or a feature.
SEE ALSOcompress(1), decomposemail(1), gzip(1), recomposemail(1), sh(1);
mailsort (Perl script, available from CPAN sites);
“Toolman: Sorting and Archiving Email”, ;login: magazine (USENIX Asso‐
ciation), August 1998;
<http://www.cs.duke.edu/~des/sortmail.html>.
AUTHORsortmail was written by Daniel E. Singer (a.k.a. Toolman) at the
Department of Computer Science, Duke University.
Toolman 12 September 1998 sortmail(1)
