16.5 Mail Aliases

Here is a setq that turns on mail aliases, along with more reminders.

;;; Message mode
; To enter message mode, type 'C-x m'
; To enter RMAIL (for reading mail),
; type 'M-x rmail'
(setq mail-aliases t)

This setq sets the value of the variable mail-aliases to t. Since t means true, the line says, in effect, “Yes, use mail aliases.”

Mail aliases are convenient short names for long email addresses or for lists of email addresses. The file where you keep your aliases is ~/.mailrc. You write an alias like this:

alias geo george@foobar.wiz.edu

When you write a message to George, address it to ‘geo’; the mailer will automatically expand ‘geo’ to the full address.