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Berticus

Member

Registered: 2008-06-11

Posts: 731

Have mutt execute external command

How can I get mutt to execute::

echo > /home/berticus/.mail

anytime I run mutt?

sand_man

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-06-10

Posts: 2,164

Re: Have mutt execute external command

Put it in a script that runs mutt afterward?
Or am I totally missing the point?

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drag0nl0rd

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Czech Republic

Registered: 2007-10-24

Posts: 127

Website

Re: Have mutt execute external command

What about making an alias in your .bash_aliases? Something like

 alias mutt='echo > /home/berticus/.mail && mutt'

Profjim

Member

From: NYC

Registered: 2008-03-24

Posts: 658

Re: Have mutt execute external command

The proposals offered above are completely valid. They make your shell wrap the mutt call inside other code, which does what you want.

From the wording of your request, I suspect that you're looking for a way to do this internally to mutt, though. There may be good reasons to do that; e.g., you may want to have your echo performed only when mutt's internal state becomes a certain way (e.g., only when you visit a given folder). To do it mutt-internally, you can use mutt's backquoting feature.
That is, instead of:

set my_temp_variable="setting"

you could use:

set my_temp_variable=`echo > where_i_want_it`

Or instead of:

source file

you could use:

source `do_my_shell_commands_without_writing_to_stdout; echo /dev/null`

hth

Berticus

Member

Registered: 2008-06-11

Posts: 731

Re: Have mutt execute external command

The proposals offered above are completely valid. They make your shell wrap the mutt call inside other code, which does what you want.

From the wording of your request, I suspect that you're looking for a way to do this internally to mutt, though. There may be good reasons to do that; e.g., you may want to have your echo performed only when mutt's internal state becomes a certain way (e.g., only when you visit a given folder). To do it mutt-internally, you can use mutt's backquoting feature.
That is, instead of:

set my_temp_variable="setting"

you could use:

set my_temp_variable=`echo > where_i_want_it`

Or instead of:

source file

you could use:

source `do_my_shell_commands_without_writing_to_stdout; echo /dev/null`

hth

Thanks, I'll try this out.