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Affected is the first terminal associated with the standard input, standard output or standard error file descriptor, in that order. Thus, it is possible to use the redirection facilities of a shell to toggle the notification for other terminals than the one biff runs on.
The following options are available:
| n | Disable notification. |
| y | Enable header notification. |
| b | Enable bell notification. |
When header notification is enabled, the header and first few lines of the message will be printed on your terminal whenever mail arrives. A "biff y" command is often included in the file .login or .profile to be executed at each login.
When bell notification is enabled, only two bell characters ( ASCII \007) will be printed on your terminal whenever mail arrives.
If no arguments are given, biff displays the present notification status of the terminal to the standard output.
The biff utility operates asynchronously. For synchronous notification use the MAIL variable of sh(1) or the mail variable of csh(1).
| 0 | Notification was enabled at the time of invocation. |
| 1 | Notification was disabled at the time of invocation. |
| >1 | An error occurred. |
| BIFF (1) | April 28, 2013 |
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| “ | "I liken starting one's computing career with Unix, say as an undergraduate, to being born in East Africa. It is intolerably hot, your body is covered with lice and flies, you are malnourished and you suffer from numerous curable diseases. But, as far as young East Africans can tell, this is simply the natural condition and they live within it. By the time they find out differently, it is too late. They already think that the writing of shell scripts is a natural act." | ” |
| — Ken Pier, Xerox PARC | ||