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gawkinet: Email

 
 2.6 Reading Email
 =================
 
 The distribution of email is usually done by dedicated email servers
 that communicate with your machine using special protocols.  To receive
 email, we will use the Post Office Protocol (POP). Sending can be done
 with the much older Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).
 
    When you type in the following program, replace the EMAILHOST by the
 name of your local email server.  Ask your administrator if the server
 has a POP service, and then use its name or number in the program below.
 Now the program is ready to connect to your email server, but it will
 not succeed in retrieving your mail because it does not yet know your
 login name or password.  Replace them in the program and it shows you
 the first email the server has in store:
 
      BEGIN {
        POPService  = "/inet/tcp/0/EMAILHOST/pop3"
        RS = ORS = "\r\n"
        print "user NAME"            |& POPService
        POPService                    |& getline
        print "pass PASSWORD"         |& POPService
        POPService                    |& getline
        print "retr 1"                |& POPService
        POPService                    |& getline
        if ($1 != "+OK") exit
        print "quit"                  |& POPService
        RS = "\r\n\\.\r\n"
        POPService |& getline
        print $0
        close(POPService)
      }
 
    The record separators 'RS' and 'ORS' are redefined because the
 protocol (POP) requires CR-LF to separate lines.  After identifying
 yourself to the email service, the command 'retr 1' instructs the
 service to send the first of all your email messages in line.  If the
 service replies with something other than '+OK', the program exits;
 maybe there is no email.  Otherwise, the program first announces that it
 intends to finish reading email, and then redefines 'RS' in order to
 read the entire email as multiline input in one record.  From the POP
 RFC, we know that the body of the email always ends with a single line
 containing a single dot.  The program looks for this using 'RS =
 "\r\n\\.\r\n"'.  When it finds this sequence in the mail message, it
 quits.  You can invoke this program as often as you like; it does not
 delete the message it reads, but instead leaves it on the server.
 

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