On Wed 15 Sep 2021 at 16:21:12 (-0500), Nate Bargmann wrote:
> * On 2021 15 Sep 14:20 -0500, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 02:01:23PM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > On Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 12:58:10PM -0500, Nate Bargmann wrote:
> > > > * On 2021 15 Sep 10:44 -0500, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> > > > > What does this command report?
> > > > >
> > > > > ;see --norun application/octet-stream:/dev/null
> >
> > > Jonathan's message confused me too. As far as I can tell, "see" is
> > > a *shell* command, not a mutt command [...]
> >
> > Perhaps the semicolon was intended to be an exclamation mark (!)
> > (although, assuming Jonathan has a USish keyboard layout they are
> > far apart indeed).
>
> Indeed! That works.
>
> I missed it in the help list as my mind was fixated on the ;. Other
> programs like Vim use ! as a means to execute a shell command.
>
> It should have been so obvious...
I think what your system is doing is as follows:
You probably have in your (default) /etc/Muttrc:
# Use mime.types to look up handlers for application/octet-stream. Can
# be undone with unmime_lookup.
mime_lookup application/octet-stream
That sends mutt looking in /etc/mime.types where it finds the line:
text/x-diff diff patch
Your attachment had the extension ".patch", so it searches your
and the system's mailcap files for "text/x-diff", fails to find it,
and eventually hits the default entry:
text/*; less '%s'; needsterminal
which it obeys.
BTW, your shell command,
!see --norun application/octet-stream:/dev/null
will give you an answer in the context of a subshell, and
not necessarily in the context of mutt itself. For example,
on my shell:
$ see --norun text/html:/dev/null
/usr/bin/sensible-browser /dev/null
$
but the special mailcap prioritised by my mutt defines:
text/html; /usr/bin/lynx -force-html -localhost -stdin
and any subshell would know nothing about that.
About the ";", it could also be an accidentally unshifted ":",
and it might be easy to mis-remember:
":" is mutt's keystroke for entering mutt commands, whereas
"!" is mutt's keystroke for entering shell commands.
Cheers,
David.
