FLIST(%manext1%)

NAME
flist, flists - list the number of messages in a given sequence

SYNOPSIS
flist [+folder1 [+folder2 ...]] [-sequence name]
[-all] [-noall] [-showzero] [-noshowzero]
[-recurse] [-norecurse] [-alpha] [-noalpha]
[-total] [-nototal] [-version] [-help]
flists is equivalent to flist -all

DESCRIPTION
This program is used to search a list of folders and display the number of messages in these folders that are in a given sequence (such as the “unseen” sequence). This is especially useful if you use some mechanism such as slocal or procmail (typically in conjunction with rcvstore) to pre-sort your mail into different folders before you view it. By default, the command flist will search the current folder for the given sequence (usually “unseen”). If (possibly multiple) folders are specified on the command line with `+folder', then those folders are searched for the given sequence. Flist will display for each folder searched, the number of messages in the given sequence and the total number of messages. The option `-sequence' is used to specify the name of the sequence for which to search. If this is not given, then the default is to search for the sequence specified by the "Unseen-Sequence" profile component. For more details about sequences, read the mh-sequence(5) man page. Typically, flist will produce a line for each folder that is searched, even those which do not contain any messages in the given sequence. Specifying `-noshowzero' will cause flist to print only those folders that have a non-zero number of messages in the given sequence. If `-recurse' is given, then for each folder that is search, flist will also recursively descend into those folders to search subfolders for the given sequence. If `-nototal' is given, only the names of the folders searched will be displayed, and flist will suppress all other output. If this option is used in conjunction with `-noshowzero', then flist will only print the names of those folders searched that contain messages in the given sequence. If the option `-all' is given, then flist will search all the folders in the top level of the users nmh directory. (If flist is invoked by a name ending with “s” (e.g., flists ), `-all' is assumed). These folders are all preceded by the read-only folders, which occur as “atr-cur-” entries in the user's nmh context. An example of the output of `flist -all' is:
/work/Mail  has  5 in sequence unseen (private); out of  46
inbox+      has 10 in sequence unseen          ; out of 153
junklist    has  0 in sequence unseen          ; out of  63
postmaster  has  1 in sequence unseen          ; out of   3
The “+” after inbox indicates that it is the current folder. The “private” flag indicates that the given sequence for that folder is private. See the mh-sequence(5) man page for details. The sorting order for the listing is alphabetical (with '-alpha'), or in a priority order defined by the Flist-Order profile entry (with folder name pattern that uses * to match zero or more characters. Longer matching patterns have precedence over shorter matching patterns. For example:
Flist-Order: personal petproject mh* * admin *junk
This order puts a few interesting folders first, such as those with mail addressed to you personally, those about a pet project, and those about mh-related things. It shoves uninteresting folders to the end, and it puts everything else in the middle in alphabetical order. ^$HOME/.mh_profile~^The user profile ^Path:~^To determine the user's nmh directory ^mh-sequences:~^File that contains public sequences ^Unseen-Sequence:~^The name of the unseen message sequence ^Flist-Order:~^To sort folders by priority folder(1), rcvstore(1), slocal(1), mh-sequence(5) `-sequence' defaults to Unseen-Sequence profile entry `-showzero' `-noall' `-norecurse' `-noalpha' `-total' Currently flist will not change the context in any way. This is probably a bug.