s-nail

S-nail is an open source and completely free command-line software, a mail processing system, as well as an extended version of the mailx software especially designed for POSIX operating systems, including GNU/Linux.

Features at a glance

Key features include a command syntax that is very similar to the one used on the GNU ed application, with lines replaced by messages, and various command-line options (see below for details). S-nail is mostly intended to offer mailx’s functionality on Linux systems.

S-nail has been engineered in such a way that it provides extensions for line editing, and supports IMAP, SMTP, POP3, IDNA, MIME and S/MIME protocols. In addition, it can be used as a mail batch language.

Getting started with S-nail

To install and use the S-nail program on your GNU/Linux operating system, you must first download the latest archive from Softoware or via its official website (see link at the end of the article), unpack it and open a terminal emulator app.

In the Linux Terminal app, you must use the ‘cd’ command to navigate to the location of the extracted archive files (e.g. cd /home/softoware/s-nail-14.7.8) and type the ‘make’ command to compile the software.

Finally, execute the ‘make install’ command as root or the ‘sudo make install’ command as a privileged user to install S-nail system wide and make it available to all users. Use it by running the ‘s-nail’ command in a terminal (it will notify you about existing emails).

Command-line options

S-nail’s command-line options, including the usage example message, can be viewed at a glance by running the ‘s-nail --help’ command in a terminal emulator app. Among the included command-line options, we can mention the ability to specify an email account, to add an attachment, to add a CC or BCC email address, to add a from email address, to add a subject, as well as to add a to email address.

What is new in this release:

• Fixed segmentation faults / bus errors when setting *nofolder* / *line-editor-cursor-right* to the null string (only with WANT_NCL), respectively. [d1f1a19b, 21e5c285, 9f6ff25d]
• *prompt* handling is now really POSIX compliant (thus no prompting occurs not only for 'set noprompt', but also for setting *prompt* to the null string). This was indeed a rather large changeset that also introduced the new *prompt* escape character \&, which expands to `?' by default and to `&' if *bsdcompat* is set. Like that we now can simply assign "\& " to *prompt* at program startup, which (a) allows to do 'set noprompt' without error (once) and (b) allows for POSIX compliance in respect to prompt handling without any complicated conditional code, but (c) gives us the opportunity to continue to support BSD prompts. [0dfe53db]
• For completeness: new command: `features'. (Rather useful for being able to implement more tests in the future, and act according to what is really compiled into the tested binary
• The `-#' command line option now also sets *quiet* by itself. [7b5a5c87]
• nail.1: a newly introduced empty line in the manual produced error messages on some systems. Fixed
• The return value of the `mimetypes' command has been reversed and should now be fixed. [acf56ac52]
• In threaded display the Subject: followup suppression no longer takes into account invisible messages. Also, rudely hack in a messages-already-written-in-this-round counter, so that the followup suppression knows when "the top of the screen" is reached, which (seems to) help(s) against missing subjects up there as well as after a `newmail'. [topic/subject]
• Added a WANT_REGEX=1 toggle in `conf.rc'. When we find regular expressions then a new regex-enabled IMAP-style search is available (see the manual for more) [1ec8fe68]

What is new in version 14.8.5:

• Fixed segmentation faults / bus errors when setting *nofolder* / *line-editor-cursor-right* to the null string (only with WANT_NCL), respectively. [d1f1a19b, 21e5c285, 9f6ff25d]
• *prompt* handling is now really POSIX compliant (thus no prompting occurs not only for 'set noprompt', but also for setting *prompt* to the null string). This was indeed a rather large changeset that also introduced the new *prompt* escape character \&, which expands to `?' by default and to `&' if *bsdcompat* is set. Like that we now can simply assign "\& " to *prompt* at program startup, which (a) allows to do 'set noprompt' without error (once) and (b) allows for POSIX compliance in respect to prompt handling without any complicated conditional code, but (c) gives us the opportunity to continue to support BSD prompts. [0dfe53db]
• For completeness: new command: `features'. (Rather useful for being able to implement more tests in the future, and act according to what is really compiled into the tested binary
• The `-#' command line option now also sets *quiet* by itself. [7b5a5c87]
• nail.1: a newly introduced empty line in the manual produced error messages on some systems. Fixed
• The return value of the `mimetypes' command has been reversed and should now be fixed. [acf56ac52]
• In threaded display the Subject: followup suppression no longer takes into account invisible messages. Also, rudely hack in a messages-already-written-in-this-round counter, so that the followup suppression knows when "the top of the screen" is reached, which (seems to) help(s) against missing subjects up there as well as after a `newmail'. [topic/subject]
• Added a WANT_REGEX=1 toggle in `conf.rc'. When we find regular expressions then a new regex-enabled IMAP-style search is available (see the manual for more) [1ec8fe68]

What is new in version 14.8.3:

• Fixed segmentation faults / bus errors when setting *nofolder* / *line-editor-cursor-right* to the null string (only with WANT_NCL), respectively. [d1f1a19b, 21e5c285, 9f6ff25d]
• *prompt* handling is now really POSIX compliant (thus no prompting occurs not only for 'set noprompt', but also for setting *prompt* to the null string). This was indeed a rather large changeset that also introduced the new *prompt* escape character \&, which expands to `?' by default and to `&' if *bsdcompat* is set. Like that we now can simply assign "\& " to *prompt* at program startup, which (a) allows to do 'set noprompt' without error (once) and (b) allows for POSIX compliance in respect to prompt handling without any complicated conditional code, but (c) gives us the opportunity to continue to support BSD prompts. [0dfe53db]
• For completeness: new command: `features'. (Rather useful for being able to implement more tests in the future, and act according to what is really compiled into the tested binary
• The `-#' command line option now also sets *quiet* by itself. [7b5a5c87]
• nail.1: a newly introduced empty line in the manual produced error messages on some systems. Fixed
• The return value of the `mimetypes' command has been reversed and should now be fixed. [acf56ac52]
• In threaded display the Subject: followup suppression no longer takes into account invisible messages. Also, rudely hack in a messages-already-written-in-this-round counter, so that the followup suppression knows when "the top of the screen" is reached, which (seems to) help(s) against missing subjects up there as well as after a `newmail'. [topic/subject]
• Added a WANT_REGEX=1 toggle in `conf.rc'. When we find regular expressions then a new regex-enabled IMAP-style search is available (see the manual for more) [1ec8fe68]

What is new in version 14.8.0:

• Fixed segmentation faults / bus errors when setting *nofolder* / *line-editor-cursor-right* to the null string (only with WANT_NCL), respectively. [d1f1a19b, 21e5c285, 9f6ff25d]
• *prompt* handling is now really POSIX compliant (thus no prompting occurs not only for 'set noprompt', but also for setting *prompt* to the null string). This was indeed a rather large changeset that also introduced the new *prompt* escape character \&, which expands to `?' by default and to `&' if *bsdcompat* is set. Like that we now can simply assign "\& " to *prompt* at program startup, which (a) allows to do 'set noprompt' without error (once) and (b) allows for POSIX compliance in respect to prompt handling without any complicated conditional code, but (c) gives us the opportunity to continue to support BSD prompts. [0dfe53db]
• For completeness: new command: `features'. (Rather useful for being able to implement more tests in the future, and act according to what is really compiled into the tested binary
• The `-#' command line option now also sets *quiet* by itself. [7b5a5c87]
• nail.1: a newly introduced empty line in the manual produced error messages on some systems. Fixed
• The return value of the `mimetypes' command has been reversed and should now be fixed. [acf56ac52]
• In threaded display the Subject: followup suppression no longer takes into account invisible messages. Also, rudely hack in a messages-already-written-in-this-round counter, so that the followup suppression knows when "the top of the screen" is reached, which (seems to) help(s) against missing subjects up there as well as after a `newmail'. [topic/subject]
• Added a WANT_REGEX=1 toggle in `conf.rc'. When we find regular expressions then a new regex-enabled IMAP-style search is available (see the manual for more) [1ec8fe68]

What is new in version 14.7.11:

• Fixed segmentation faults / bus errors when setting *nofolder* / *line-editor-cursor-right* to the null string (only with WANT_NCL), respectively. [d1f1a19b, 21e5c285, 9f6ff25d]
• *prompt* handling is now really POSIX compliant (thus no prompting occurs not only for 'set noprompt', but also for setting *prompt* to the null string). This was indeed a rather large changeset that also introduced the new *prompt* escape character \&, which expands to `?' by default and to `&' if *bsdcompat* is set. Like that we now can simply assign "\& " to *prompt* at program startup, which (a) allows to do 'set noprompt' without error (once) and (b) allows for POSIX compliance in respect to prompt handling without any complicated conditional code, but (c) gives us the opportunity to continue to support BSD prompts. [0dfe53db]
• For completeness: new command: `features'. (Rather useful for being able to implement more tests in the future, and act according to what is really compiled into the tested binary
• The `-#' command line option now also sets *quiet* by itself. [7b5a5c87]
• nail.1: a newly introduced empty line in the manual produced error messages on some systems. Fixed
• The return value of the `mimetypes' command has been reversed and should now be fixed. [acf56ac52]
• In threaded display the Subject: followup suppression no longer takes into account invisible messages. Also, rudely hack in a messages-already-written-in-this-round counter, so that the followup suppression knows when "the top of the screen" is reached, which (seems to) help(s) against missing subjects up there as well as after a `newmail'. [topic/subject]
• Added a WANT_REGEX=1 toggle in `conf.rc'. When we find regular expressions then a new regex-enabled IMAP-style search is available (see the manual for more) [1ec8fe68]