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This page displays the COHERENT manpage for .forward [Set a forwarding address for mail].
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.forward -- System Administration Set a forwarding address for mail The file $HOME/.forward lets you automatically redirect your incoming mail. You can redirect mail to one or more other users, who are located either on your local machine or on a remote site; or you can redirect your mail to one or more programs on your local machine, for further processing; or both. As you can see, this feature of the mail system included with COHERENT gives you great flexibility in processing your mail. For example, you may wish to forward to another user any mail that is sent to the superuser root, so you can handle it immediately. (If you don't, it will languish in root's mailbox until someone logs in as root, which may not happen for days.) To forward root's mail to user fred, place the following line into file /.forward: fred Thereafter, whenever mail is sent to root, it will be forwarded automatically to user fred. For another example, suppose that you are going on vacation, and you want your mail to be forwarded both to user fred and to user anne. To do so, insert the following instruction into file $HOME/.forward: fred, anne Thereafter, the route-mail program rmail will send a copy of every mail message you receive to fred and to anne. Please note that rmail will not insert a copy into your mailbox: if you forward your mail, you will not see it. For another example, suppose that user fred has an account on each of two systems: one called acme.com and the other zenith.com. Suppose, further, that he logs into acme.com regularly, but he logs into zenith.com only now and again. This user probably would want to route any mail he receives on zenith.com to acme.com, so he will see it immediately. To do so, he would put the following instruction into file $HOME/.forward on zenith.com: fred@acme.com Thereafter, all mail sent to address fred@zenith.com will be forwarded automatically to fred@acme.com. Please note that it is illegal to include in .forward the name of the user whose mail is being forwarded, because it causes an infinite loop in the mail system. For example, writing fred, anne, root into root's .forward file causes any message sent to root to be forwarded to fred, anne, and root; the copy forwarded to root is again forwarded to fred, anne, and root; and so on, ad infinitum. You can also embed the name of a program with your .forward file. All mail sent to your account will be handed to this program for processing. For example, the elm mailer includes a program called filter, which a user can program to read his mail and throw away unwanted messages. If you have installed elm onto your system, you can turn on filter by embedding the following command into file $HOME/.forward: "|/usr/local/bin/filter" Note that the command must be preceded by a `|' symbol; this is because filter receives its input from the standard input, which is the standard method for programs that filter text or mail. Note, too, that the entire command must be enclosed within quotation marks. See Also Administering COHERENT, mail [overview], smail