biff turns mail notification on or off for the terminal session. With no arguments, biff displays the current notification status for the terminal.

If notification is allowed, the terminal rings the bell and displays the header and the first few lines of each arriving mail message. biff operates asynchronously. For synchronized notices, use the MAIL variable of sh(1) or the mail variable of csh(1).

A `biff y' command can be included in your ~/.login or ~/.profile file for execution when you log in.

y

Allow mail notification for the terminal.

n

Disable notification for the terminal.

~/.login

User's login file

~/.profile

User's profile file

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

csh(1), mail(1), sh(1), attributes(5)