Re: using movemail directly in .emacs

[Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com>]

Hikaru Ichijyo <ichijyo@macross.sdf.jp> writes:

I think it's possible to do what you want.  It'll be quite a fragile
setup though.

Movemail isn't a Lisp program, it's a C program.  There are two versions
of it, the simple one the ships with Emacs and a more complete one
that's part of the GNU Mailutils package.

You run it like this:
movemail -p mbox://var/spool/mail/smith ~/to.mbox
The "-p" switch preserves the contents of the the mailbox you're taking
the mail from.  You can run it from .emacs using something like
"shell-command".  Check out the Mailutils manual at gnu.org.

As W. Greenhouse mentions Rmail and similar mailers put info in the mbox
file that may make it incompatible with other mailers.  I have no idea
if VM does this, check it's manual.

Here's an alternative way to change mailer that may be easier.  Start up
another email account.  Send stuff like this list and other email lists
to it.  Get used to your chosen Emacs mailer using that new account.
Then, later on use Emacs for both your regular account and that one.
Most Emacs mailers allow you to pick up mail from multiple accounts.
That may interfer with your use of the mail spool though.

BR,
Robert Thorpe