NAME

mailalias - translate mail alias names

SYNOPSIS

mailalias [ -s ] [ -v ] name ...

DESCRIPTION

mailalias is called by mail. It places on the standard output a list of mail addresses corresponding to name. The mail addresses are found by performing the following steps:

1. Look for the file /var/mail/name. If found, print name and exit.

2. Look for a match in the user's local alias file $HOME/lib/names. If a line is found beginning with the word name, print the rest of the line on standard output and exit.

3. Look for a match in the system-wide alias files, which are listed in the master path file /etc/mail/namefiles. If a line is found beginning with the word name, print the rest of the line on standard output and exit. If an alias file is a directory name dir, then search the file dir/name. By default, the file /etc/mail/namefiles lists the directory /etc/mail/lists and the file /etc/mail/names.

4. Otherwise print name and exit.

The alias files may contain comments (lines beginning with #) and information lines of the form:

name list-of-addresses

Tokens on these lines are separated by white-space. Lines may be continued by placing a backslash (\) at the end of the line.

If the -s option is not specified and more than one name is being translated, each line of output will be prefixed with the name being translated.

The -v option causes debugging information to be written to standard output.

FILES

$HOME/lib/names               private aliases
/etc/mail/namefiles           list of files to search
/etc/mail/names               standard file to search

SEE ALSO

uucp(1), mail(1).
smtp(1M), smtpd(1M), smtpqer(1M), smtpsched(1M),  tosmtp(1M)
in the System Administrator's Reference Manual.