Subject: Create nickname for existing mbox message file

From: Rich Shepard <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2026 14:03:19 -0700 (PDT)

I've used pine and alpine since I defenestrated to linux 29 years ago. I
have two domains: business and personal. The alpine Incoming-Folders
collection has, in addition to INBOX, nicknames for the mbox files in the
'mail' folders collection.

All personal incoming and stored messages are in the ~/mail/personal file.
That file used to have the nickname, 'personal,' in the Incoming-Folders
collection ... which I accidently deleted last Friday.

I want to add a nickname of the personal file back in the Incoming-Folders
collection but my web searches (and a NetworkAdmin friend's help efforts)
have not found a way to do this.

Your help is needed as I'm out of ideas and my friend has used only Maildir
the past couple of decades.

TIA,

Rich

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From: Christian Kujau <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2026 15:28:33 +0200 (CEST)

> I've used pine and alpine since I defenestrated to linux 29 years ago. I

Different "Alpine" -- ITYM the email client:

 https://mailman23.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/alpine-info

> have not found a way to do this.

I don't know if the Alpine MUA supports "nicknames". But maybe play around 
with symbolic links, so directories (folders) show up under different 
names?

C.
-- 
BOFH excuse #225:

It's those computer people in X {city of world}.  They keep stuffing things up.

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From: Rich Shepard <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2026 07:17:35 -0700 (PDT)

> with symbolic links, so directories (folders) show up under different

Christian,

Both pine and alpine support nicknames. These are names in the incoming
folder that display the contents of the related file in the mail folder.

The Mailbox message format places each message in a separate file in the
appropriate directory. The mbox format places all messages in a single file
in ~/mail/.

For example, here the 'statistics' nickname in the incoming folder accesses
all messages in ~/mail/r.

I'm going to try an idea this coming weekend and will report results.

Thanks,

Rich

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From: Rich Shepard <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Aug 2026 09:50:35 -0700 (PDT)

> 'mail' folders collection.

I discovred that alpine does not now allow nicknames for mbox files.

My solution: modify ~/.procmailrc so all messages to my personal domain are
placed in my INBOX. Those I want to save I'll do so in ~/mail/personal just
as I manually save client files in ~/mai/.

Rich