Other Commands

Whereis Command

The WhereIs command (W) is available in many of Pine's screen. It searches through whatever "item" it is that you are looking at -- the current message, the current folder index, the address books, etc.

WhereIs has special features to let you "find" the beginning (Ctrl-Y) or ending (Ctrl-V) of the item you are searching.

Also, in the FOLDER INDEX screen, WhereIs can be used as a quick way to select messages, see the section on selecting messages for more on that.

Full Headers Toggle Command

Every email message comes with some header lines that you normally don't see. These include anywhere from 3-20 lines added by Internet mail transport system to record the route your message took, for diagnostic purposes. These are normally of no import and simply add clutter, so Pine suppresses them from MESSAGE TEXT display.

There is, however, a way to reveal them. The Header Mode (H) command is a toggle which controls Pine's handling of these header lines. Normally, full headers is "off" and you only see a few lines about who a message is to and who it is from. When you press "H" to turn full headers on, Pine will show you the normal header lines as well as delivery headers, comment headers and MIME headers.

Several different Pine commands honor the header mode -- it affects how messages are displayed, how they appear in forward and reply email, how they are saved and how they are exported.

The presence or absence of the Header Mode command is determined by the "enable-full-header-cmd" feature-list option in your Pine configuration. Also, it may be administratively disabled by your system manager; if it doesn't work, please check with your local help desk before reporting a bug.

Sort Command

In Pine's generic configuration, messages are presented in the order in which they arrive. This default can be changed in the SETUP CONFIGURATION. You can also re-sort the folder on demand with the sort ($) command. Your sorting options are: Subject, Arrival, From, Date, siZe, OrderedSubject and Reverse.

Some of the subtleties: sorting by subject will group all messages with the same subject together and then puts the groups in alphabetical order. Sorting by "ordered subject" does a grouping intended to simulate a "threaded" sort, and then presents each "thread" in order of the date of the first message in the group. Reverse simply reverses whatever the current sort order is.

Sorting a folder does not actually rearrange the way the folder is saved, it just re-arranges how the messages are presented to you. This means that Pine has to do the work of sorting every time you change sort order. Sometimes, especially with PC-Pine or with large folders, this could take a while.

Expunge/Exclude Command

Expunge/Exclude is the command Pine uses to actually remove all messages marked for deletion. With regular email files, expunge literally deletes the text from the current folder. With newsgroups or shared mailboxes, you don't have permission to actually remove the message, so it is an exclude -- Pine removes the message from your view of the folder even though it is not technically gone.

Next Interesting Message Command

When you press the TAB key, Pine advances to the next "interesting" message. When you are using Pine to read email, that message is the next new or important message in the folder (a new message is one you have not read before; an important message is one you have flagged as important).

When reading news folders, Pine cannot tell which messages you have read and which you have not, so the next "interesting" message is the next one which you have not yet deleted.

Jump to Message Command

This is Pine's way of allowing you to go straight to a specific message. Just press "J" and then enter the message number. Pine can also be configured such that typing in any number automatically jumps you to that message (see enable-jump-shortcut in the SETUP CONFIGURATION).

Goto Folder Command

Goto is the command which lets you bypass Pine's folder selection screens and jump directly to a new folder. You can select any folder in the world: one in your current collection, one in a different collection or one in a collection you've never even used before.

Pine will help you as much as it can to narrow in on the folder you want. However, if the folder is outside of your defined collections, you are going to have to key in the exact folder location with the right syntax. See the section on IMAP folder syntax for more details on this.