by >I want the computer to tell me how many messages I have in my mailbox
>when I log on. I wanted to put something like this into my .login
>file but It gives me error messages:
>echo "You have" 'grep Subject: /usr/spool/mail/me | wc -l' "messages."
Wrong quotes, should be -
echo "You have" `grep Subject: /usr/spool/mail/me | wc -l` "messages."
or -
echo "You have `grep Subject: /usr/spool/mail/me | wc -l` messages."
But, another problem is, if you've no mail, /usr/spool/mail/me does not
exist, leading grep to say:
grep: can't open /usr/spool/mail/me
Wc will still report 0.
You might try -
sh -c 'echo "You have `grep 2>/dev/null Subject: /usr/spool/mail/me | wc -l` messages."'
Hope this helps.
Quote:>Stacy