RUN-MAILCAP(1) Run Mailcap Programs RUN-MAILCAP(1)
NAME
run-mailcap, view, see, edit, compose, print - execute programs via en-
tries in the mailcap file
SYNOPSIS
run-mailcap --action=ACTION [--option[=value]] [MIME-TYPE:[ENCOD-
ING:]]FILE [...]
The see, edit, compose and print versions are just aliases that default
to the view, edit, compose, and print actions (respectively).
DESCRIPTION
run-mailcap (or any of its aliases) will use the given action to process
each mime-type/file in turn. Each file is specified as its mime-type,
its encoding (e.g. compression), and filename together, separated by
colons. If the mime-type is omitted, an attempt to determine the type
is made by trying to match the file's extension with those in the
mime.types files. If no mime-type is found, a last attempt will be done
by running the file command, if available. If the encoding is omitted,
it will also be determined from the file's extensions. Currently sup-
ported encodings are gzip (.gz), bzip2 (.bz2), xz (.xz), zstd (.zst[d]),
and compress (.Z). A filename of "-" can be used to mean "standard in-
put", but then a mime-type must be specified.
Both the user's files (~/.mailcap; ~/.mime.types) and the system files
(/etc/mailcap; /etc/mime.types) are searched in turn for information.
EXAMPLES
see picture.jpg
print output.ps.gz
compose text/html:index.htm
extract-mail-attachment msg.txt | see image/tiff:gzip:-
OPTIONS
All options are in the form --<opt>=<value>.
--action=<action>
Performs the specified action on the files. Valid actions are
view, cat (uses only "copiousoutput" rules and sends output to
STDOUT), compose, composetyped, edit and print. If no action is
specified, the action will be determined by how the program was
called.
--debug
Turns on extra information to find out what is happening.
--nopager
Ignores any "copiousoutput" directive and sends output to STDOUT.
--norun
Displays the found command without actually executing it.
SECURITY
A temporary symbolic link to the file is opened if the file name matches
the Perl regular expression "[^[:alnum:],.:/@%^+=_-]", in order to pro-
tect from the injection of shell commands, and to make sure that the
name can always be displayed in the current locale. In addition, the
file is opened using its absolute path to prevent the injection of com-
mand-line arguments, for instance using file names starting with dashes.
SEE ALSO
file(1) mailcap(5) mailcap.order(5) update-mime(8)
AUTHOR
run-mailcap (and its aliases) was written by Brian White
<bcwhite@pobox.com>.
COPYRIGHT
run-mailcap (and its aliases) is in the public domain (the only true
"free").
Debian Project 1st Jan 2008 RUN-MAILCAP(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 04:51:28 CET 2025.