This section of MH & nmh: Email for Users & Programmers is now the MH-E Manual. It's moved to http://mh-e.sourceforge.net/manual/.
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By default, operations on folders work only one level at a time. Set
mh-recursive-folders to non-nil to operate on all folders.
This mostly means that you'll be able to see all your folders when you
press TAB when prompted for a folder name. The variable
mh-auto-folder-collect is normally turned on to generate a list
of folder names in the background as soon as mh-e is loaded. Otherwise,
the list is generated when you need a folder name the first time (as
with o (mh-refile-msg)). If you have a lot of folders and
you have mh-recursive-folders set, this could take a while, which
is why it's nice to do the folder collection in the background.
The function mh-default-folder-for-message-function is used by
o (mh-refile-msg) and C-c C-f C-f (mh-to-fcc)
to generate a default folder. The generated folder name should be a
string with a `+' before it. For each of my correspondents, I use the
same name for both an alias and a folder. So, I wrote a function that
takes the address in the `From:' header field, finds it in my alias
file, and returns the alias, which is used as a default folder name.
This is the most complicated example given here, and it demonstrates
several features of Emacs Lisp programming. You should be able to drop
this into `~/.emacs', however. If you use this to store messages
in a subfolder of your Mail directory, you can modify the line that
starts `(format +%s...' and insert your subfolder after the folder
symbol `+'.
Creating useful default folder for refiling via mh-default-folder-for-message-function
(defun my-mh-folder-from-address ()
"Determine folder name from address.
Takes the address in the From: header field, and returns its corresponding
alias from the user's personal aliases file. Returns nil if the address
was not found."
(require 'rfc822) ; for the rfc822 functions
(search-forward-regexp "^From: \\(.*\\)") ; grab header field contents
(save-excursion ; save state
(let ((addr (car (rfc822-addresses ; get address
(buffer-substring (match-beginning 1)
(match-end 1)))))
(buffer (get-buffer-create " *temp*")) ; set local variables
folder)
(set-buffer buffer) ; jump to temporary buffer
(unwind-protect ; run kill-buffer when done
(progn ; function grouping construct
(insert-file-contents (expand-file-name "aliases"
mh-user-path))
(goto-char (point-min)) ; grab aliases file and go to start
(setq folder
;; Search for the given address, even commented-out
;; addresses are found!
;; The function search-forward-regexp sets values that are
;; later used by match-beginning and match-end.
(if (search-forward-regexp (format "^;*\\(.*\\):.*%s"
addr) nil t)
;; NOTE WELL: this is what the return value looks like.
;; You can modify the format string to match your own
;; Mail hierarchy.
(format "+%s" (buffer-substring (match-beginning 1)
(match-end 1))))))
(kill-buffer buffer)) ; get rid of our temporary buffer
folder))) ; function's return value
(setq mh-default-folder-for-message-function 'my-mh-folder-from-address)
The hook mh-refile-msg-hook is called after a message is marked
to be refiled.
The variable mh-sortm-args holds extra arguments to pass on to
the sortm command. Note: this variable is only consulted when a
prefix argument is given to M-x mh-sort-folder. It is used to
override any arguments given in a sortm: entry in your MH profile
(`~/.mh_profile').
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