10/20/83 Message selection control arguments: The list, print, print_header, delete, and retrieve requests accept several control arguments to supply further criteria for message selection. Application of selection control arguments: The selections implied by these control arguments are applied to the messages identified by any message specifiers given to the request. If no message specifiers are given, all messages of the appropriate type in the mailbox are considered for selection. For example, the request line: list 23:30 -from Palter.Multics lists all non-deleted messages in the mailbox from message #23 through #30 which were sent by the user Palter.Multics. Selection classes: These control arguments are divided into four classes -- subject selection, time selection, author selection, and recipient selection. If several control arguments from one class are provided, a message need only satisfy one of the selections in that class to be considered by the request. If control arguments from more than one class are provided, a message must satisfy one of the selections in all of these classes provided to be considered by the request. For example, the request line: list -from Palter.Multics -from Sibert.Multics -after 1/1/82 lists all non-deleted messages in the mailbox which were both sent by either of the two users Palter.Multics and Sibert.Multics and sent any time from January 1982 to the present. (Ie: a message sent by Palter.Multics on 23 December 1981 would not be listed). Case sensitivity of selection: Control arguments are provided to allow subject selection and qedx regular expression matching for author and recipient selections to ignore the distinction between upper and lower case characters when examining header fields. Thus, -sj foo -non_case_sensitive will match a Subject field if it contains any of the strings "foo", "FOO", "Foo", etc. -case_sensitive, -cs causes subject selections and qedx regular expression searches for author and recipient selections to be case sensitive. (Default) -non_case_sensitive, -ncs causes subject selections and qedx regular expression searches for author and recipient selections to be case insensitive. Subject selection: Subject selection control arguments may use either qedx regular expressions or literal matches. The string value (STR) supplied to these control arguments is interpreted as a qedx regular expression if it is surrounded by slashes (/); otherwise, a literal occurence of the string must appear in the header field. If the string contains any spaces, horizontal tabs, quotes, parentheses, or brackets, it must be enclosed in quotes to avoid misinterpretation by the request line processor and any quotes in the string must be doubled. For example: -sj /^read_mail/ only selects messages whose Subject fields start with the string "read_mail". -subject STR, -sj STR, -subject /STR/, -sj /STR/ selects any messages of the appropriate type whose Subject fields match the specified STR. -in_reply_to STR, -irt STR, -in_reply_to /STR/, -irt /STR/ selects any messages of the appropriate type whose In-Reply-To fields match the specified STR. Time selection: Time selection control arguments are applied to the date/time that the message was created as indicated in the message's Date header field. In the following descriptions, DT, DT1, and DT2 represent date/time strings. For details of the acceptable date/time string formats, type: .. help date_time_strings.gi In the case of -between, -after, and -before, the date/times specified are truncated to an appropriate midnight. For example: -between 9/1/82 9/30/82 will match all messages created during the month of September 1982. -between DT1 DT2, -bt DT1 DT2 selects any messages of the appropriate type which were created between the days specified by DT1 and DT2, inclusive. -after DT, -af DT selects any messages of the appropriate type which were created on or after the date specified by DT. -before DT, -be DT selects any messages of the appropriate type which were created before the date specified by DT. -date DT, -dt DT selects any messages of the appropriate type which were created on the date specified by DT. The following time selection control arguments do not truncate the date/times specified to an appropriate midnight and, therfore, provide finer control on the messages selected by time: -between_time DT1 DT2, -btt DT1 DT2 selects any messages of the appropriate type which were created between the date/times specified by DT1 and DT2, respectively. -after_time DT, -aft DT selects any messages of the appropriate type which were created after the date/time specified by DT. -before_time DT, -bet DT selects any messages of the appropriate type which were created before the date/time specified by DT. Author and recipient selection: Author and recipient selection control arguments either may exactly match the individual addresses within the appropriate header field or may use a qedx regular expression match against the entire content of the header field as single string. If the value supplied to these control arguments is surrounded by slashes, it is interpreted as a qedx regular expression to match against the entire content of the header field; otherwise, the value, which might actually consist of several tokens, is interpreted as an address which must exactly match one or more of the addresses in the field. For a description of the valid syntax for an address, type: help addresses.gi -section control argument If a qedx regular expression match is requested and the string contains any spaces, horizontal tabs, quotes, parentheses, or brackets, it must be enclosed in quotes to avoid misinterpretation by the request line processor and any quotes in the string must be doubled. For example: -from /Palter.*MIT/ matches any message whose From field contains the two strings "Palter" and "MIT" and: -to gmp -at System-M matches any message one of whose primary recipients is the user named "gmp" on the foreign system "System-M". Author selection: -from address, -fm address -from /STR/, -fm /STR/ selects any messages of the appropriate type whose From field either contains the specified address or matches the given qedx regular expression. -reply_to address, -rpt address -reply_to /STR/, -rpt /STR/ selects any messages of the appropriate type whose Reply-To field either contains the specified address or matches the given qedx regular expression. Recipient selection: -recipient address, -rcp address -recipient /STR/, -rcp /STR/ selects any messages of the appropriate type whose To, cc, bcc, or Redistributed-To fields either contains the specified address or matches the given qedx regular expression. -to address, -to /STR/ selects any messages of the appropriate type whose To field either contains the specified address or matches the given regular expression. -cc address, -cc /STR/ selects any messages of the appropriate type whose cc field either contains the specified address or matches the given regular expression. -bcc address, -bcc /STR/ selects any messages of the appropriate type whose bcc field either contains the specified address or matches the given regular expression. -forwarded_to address, -fwdt address -forwarded_to /STR/, -fwdt /STR/ selects any messages of the appropriate type whose Redistributed-To field either contains the specified address or matches the given regular expression. ----------------------------------------------------------- Historical Background This edition of the Multics software materials and documentation is provided and donated to Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Group BULL including BULL HN Information Systems Inc. as a contribution to computer science knowledge. This donation is made also to give evidence of the common contributions of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bell Laboratories, General Electric, Honeywell Information Systems Inc., Honeywell BULL Inc., Groupe BULL and BULL HN Information Systems Inc. to the development of this operating system. Multics development was initiated by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Project MAC (1963-1970), renamed the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence in the mid 1970s, under the leadership of Professor Fernando Jose Corbato. Users consider that Multics provided the best software architecture for managing computer hardware properly and for executing programs. Many subsequent operating systems incorporated Multics principles. Multics was distributed in 1975 to 2000 by Group Bull in Europe , and in the U.S. by Bull HN Information Systems Inc., as successor in interest by change in name only to Honeywell Bull Inc. and Honeywell Information Systems Inc. . ----------------------------------------------------------- Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute these programs and their documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted,provided that the below copyright notice and historical background appear in all copies and that both the copyright notice and historical background and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the names of MIT, HIS, BULL or BULL HN not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the programs without specific prior written permission. Copyright 1972 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Honeywell Information Systems Inc. Copyright 2006 by BULL HN Information Systems Inc. Copyright 2006 by Bull SAS All Rights Reserved