BIFF(1) BSD General Commands Manual BIFF(1)

NAME
     bbiiffff - be notified if mail arrives and who it is from

SYNOPSIS
     bbiiffff [nn | yy | bb]

DESCRIPTION
     The bbiiffff utility informs the system whether you want to be notified on
     your terminal when mail arrives.

     Affected is the first terminal associated with the standard input, stan-
     dard output or standard error file descriptor, in that order.  Thus, it
     is possible to use the redirection facilities of a shell to toggle the
     notification for other terminals than the one bbiiffff runs on.

     The following options are available:

     nn       Disable notification.

     yy       Enable header notification.

     bb       Enable bell notification.

     When header notification is enabled, the header and first few lines of
     the message will be printed on your terminal whenever mail arrives.  A
     ``biff y'' command is often included in the file .login or .profile to be
     executed at each login.

     When bell notification is enabled, only two bell characters (ASCII \007)
     will be printed on your terminal whenever mail arrives.

     If no arguments are given, bbiiffff displays the present notification status
     of the terminal to the standard output.

     The bbiiffff utility operates asynchronously.  For synchronous notification
     use the MAIL variable of sh(1) or the mail variable of csh(1).

DIAGNOSTICS     The bbiiffff utility exits with one of the following values:

     0       Notification is enabled.

     1       Notification is disabled.

     >1      An error occurred.

CCOOMMPPAATTIIBBIILLIITTYY
     Previous versions of the bbiiffff utility affected the terminal attached to
     standard error without first trying the standard input or output devices.

SEE ALSO
     csh(1), mail(1), sh(1), comsat(8)

HISTORY     The bbiiffff command appeared in 4.0BSD.  It was named after the dog of Heidi
     Stettner.  He died in August 1993, at 15.

BSD                              July 9, 2002                              BSD