Quite often you will want to send mail to several users at the same time (the entire accounting department perhaps). To do that you could enter all of their addresses on the to: line or you could create a mail alias.

A mail alias is a group of user names that are stored in a file together. When you want to send mail to the members of the group you just address the alias instead of the individual users.

Command Format

mail aliasname

To create an alias you must edit the .mailrc file (located in your home directory). You can use any editor to create or add mail aliases to the .mailrc file. Create one mail alias per line with the format: alias name userlist. Once finished save the changes. For example:

$ cd
$ vi .mailrc
~
~
~
~
".mailrc" [newfile]
alias test BobJ@srv1 JoeS@srv2 TomR@srv3
Escape
:wq

Now you can view the alias with the a command in mail:

$ mail

& a

test BobJ@srv1 JoeS@srv2 TomR@srv3

&

Now just address an e-mail to the alias instead of the individual users:

$ mail test

Subject: test
This is a test of my newly created alias
user2
.