NAME

       show - show (display) messages

SYNOPSIS

       show [+folder] [msgs] [-draft] [-showproc program] [-showmimeproc program] [-header | -noheader]
            [-checkmime | -nocheckmime] [switches for showproc or showmimeproc] [-version] [-help]

DESCRIPTION

       Show lists each of the specified messages to the standard output (typically, the terminal).

       By  default,  text  (non-MIME)  messages are filtered and displayed by the nmh command mhl.  This command
       will display text messages in a nice, uniform format.  It also allows you to configure the format of  the
       displayed  messages and which headers fields are shown.  See the mhl(1) manual page for the details about
       this command.  This default can be changed by defining the showproc profile component.  Any switches  not
       recognized  by  show  are passed along to that program.  To override the default and the showproc profile
       component, use the -showproc program switch.  For example, -showproc more will cause the more program  to
       list  the  messages  with  no  reformatting.   Normally, this program is specified as the showproc in the
       user's .mh_profile, rather than using a command line switch.

       By default, non-text messages (MIME messages with multi-media contents) are processed  and  displayed  by
       the  nmh command mhshow.  See the mhshow(1) manual page for details about this command.  This default can
       changed by defining the showmimeproc profile component.  Any switches not recognized by show  are  passed
       along  to  that  program.   To  override  this  default  and  the showmimeproc profile component, use the
       -showmimeproc program switch.

       Note that in some cases, show may invoke the showmimeproc even for textual contents.   This  will  happen
       for text messages that specify a transfer encoding (such as MIME quoted-printable or base64) or specify a
       character set that show doesn't believe can be displayed natively.  The appropriate locale(1) environment
       variables  should  be  set  to the terminal's native character set to avoid gratuitous invocations of the
       showmimeproc.  See the locale(1) man page for details about these environment variables.

       The option -checkmime (set by default) instructs show to test if any of the messages to be displayed  are
       non-text (MIME) messages.  If any are non-text, they are displayed by the program showmimeproc, else they
       are  displayed by the program showproc.  The option -nocheckmime disables this test and instructs show to
       use showproc, regardless of whether any of the messages are non-text (MIME) messages.

       The -noshowproc switch will  disable  any  formatting  or  paging  of  messages.   It  is  equivalent  to
       -nocheckmime -showproc cat.  It is still accepted, but should be considered (somewhat) obsolete.

       The  -header  switch  tells  show  to  display  a  one-line description of the message being shown.  This
       description includes the folder and the message number.

       If no `msgs' are specified, the current message is used.  Although it depends on the specific showproc or
       showmimeproc, in the default setup when more than one message is specified, you will be  prompted  for  a
       <RETURN>  prior  to listing each message.  Each message will be listed a page at a time, and when the end
       of page is reached, the program will wait for a <SPACE> or <RETURN>.  If a <RETURN> is entered,  it  will
       print the next line, whereas <SPACE> will print the next screenful.

       If  the  standard  output is not a terminal, no queries are made, and each file is listed with a one-line
       header and two lines of separation.

       “show -draft” will list the file <mh-dir>/draft if it exists.

       If the profile entry “Unseen-Sequence” is present and non-empty,  then  show  will  remove  each  of  the
       messages shown from each sequence named by the profile entry.

FILES

       $HOME/.mh_profile          The user profile

PROFILE COMPONENTS

       Path:                To determine the user's nmh directory
       Current-Folder:      To find the default current folder
       Unseen-Sequence:     To name sequences denoting unseen messages
       showproc:            Program to show text (non-MIME) messages
       showmimeproc:        Program to show non-text (MIME) messages

SEE ALSO

       mhl(1), mhshow(1), next(1), prev(1), scan(1)

DEFAULTS

       `+folder' defaults to the current folder
       `msgs' defaults to cur
       `-checkmime'
       `-header'

CONTEXT

       If  a  folder  is  given,  it  will become the current folder.  The last message selected will become the
       current message.

BUGS

       The -header switch doesn't work when `msgs' expands to more than one message.  If the  showproc  is  mhl,
       then this problem can be circumvented by referencing the “messagename” field in the mhl format file.

       Show  updates the user's context before showing the message.  Hence show will mark messages as seen prior
       to the user actually seeing them.  This is generally not  a  problem,  unless  the  user  relies  on  the
       “unseen” messages mechanism, and interrupts show while it is showing “unseen” messages.

       If  your  showproc  is mhl (the default), then show uses a built-in mhl: it does not actually run the mhl
       program.  Hence, if you define your own showproc , don't call it mhl since show won't run it.

       If your showproc is the pager more, then avoid running show in the  background  with  only  its  standard
       output piped to another process, as in

            show | imprint &

       Due  to  a  bug  in more, show will go into a “tty input” state.  To avoid this problem, re-direct show's
       diagnostic output as well.  For users of csh:

            show |& imprint &

       For users of sh:

            show 2>&1 | imprint &

nmh-1.6                                           June 6, 2012                                         SHOW(1mh)