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To read messages from a given mailbox, use one of the following ways of invoking `mail':
mail
mail --file
mail --file=path_to_mailbox
mail --user=user
Please note, that usual mailbox permissions won't allow you to use the last variant of invocation, unless you are a super-user. Similarly, the last but one variant is also greatly affected by the permissions the target mailbox has.
Unless you have started mail with `--norc' command line option, it will read the contents of the system-wide configuration file. Then it reads the contents of user configuration file, if any. See section Personal and system-wide configuration files for detailed description of these files. After this initial setup, `mail' displays the first page of header lines and enters interactive mode. In interactive mode, `mail' displays its prompt (`?', if not set otherwise) and executes the commands the user enters.
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