Alpha VMS Email output to a flat file

[J Asson]

I know of the extract command in mail but is there a program which can extract to a flat file all the current unread mail messages in an account and to follow on - then be able to delete those extracted messages as well ?

[Thomas Ritter]

J., you can build your own. We actually wrote a commercial quality transaction processing system which used email as the transport.

VMS provides a callable interface to mail. We used C to call the mail routines. The routines are a built ugly at first sight, but once you become comfortable with it, good fun.

There are some examples in the VMS doco set. Cannot remember where.

[Thomas Ritter]

J., try a google search on MAIL$_MESSAGE_FILE_CTX

found this.

http://pcbunn.cithep.caltech.edu/jjb/mail/vms2eud.html

[Thomas Ritter]

The doco...

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/DOC/83final/4493/4493pro_047.html

[Hein van den Heuvel · Accepted solution]

Sounds like a minor command file with

$mail
select newmail
extract/all newmail.txt
delete/all
$rename newmail.txt some-nicer-name.txt

What am I missing here?
Hein.

[J Asson]

Well I never flipping thought it would be that simple and forgot I could DCL into VMS.

It would be nice to have some code though that would recognise new mail rather than have to run a batch to handle checks but the later is ok with me as I am not a code fella.

Cheers and thanks to all from the Gold Coast in Australia

[J Asson]

Code and DCL into Mail