How to iterate eml file with mailutils?

Question

How would a directory of .eml files be iterated?

nicholas@mordor:~$ 
nicholas@mordor:~$ mail -f foomail/foo.eml 
"/home/nicholas/foomail/foo.eml": 0 messages
nicholas@mordor:~$ 

Whereas, I'd like to see a list to select from.

Answer 1

You can't, EML format is not one of the supported local mailbox formats by GNU Mailutils ... But, apparently the MBOX format is.

Luckily the conversion from EML to MBOX is easy and that's what you probably should consider.

To demonstrate that, I used this sample EML ... so,

$ head *.eml
==> 1.eml <==
FCC: imap://[email protected]/Sent
X-Identity-Key: id1
X-Account-Key: account1
From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: test confirmation
To: [email protected], [email protected],
 [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
 [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2019 14:54:37 +0900
==> 2.eml <==
FCC: imap://[email protected]/Sent
X-Identity-Key: id1
X-Account-Key: account1
From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: test confirmation
To: [email protected], [email protected],
 [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
 [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2019 14:54:37 +0900
==> 3.eml <==
FCC: imap://[email protected]/Sent
X-Identity-Key: id1
X-Account-Key: account1
From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: test confirmation
To: [email protected], [email protected],
 [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
 [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2019 14:54:37 +0900

... and try to read them with mailutils (Doesn't Work):

$ mail -V
mail (GNU Mailutils) 3.16
Copyright (C) 2007-2023 Free Software Foundation, inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
$
$ 
$ mail --file *.eml
mail: -f requires at most one command line argument
$ 
$ 
$ mail --file 1.eml
"/home/ubuntu/test/dir/1.eml": 0 messages

... Now let's convert those 3 EML messages to one MBOX file:

$ for e in *.eml
  do
    date +"From - %a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y" >> file.mbox
    cat "$e" >> file.mbox
    echo >> file.mbox
    done
$ 
$ 
$ ls -lh
total 20K
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu 2.5K Nov 30 17:48 1.eml
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu 2.5K Nov 30 17:48 2.eml
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu 2.5K Nov 30 17:48 3.eml
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu 7.6K Nov 30 17:49 file.mbox
$ 
$ 
$ head file.mbox 
From - Thu Nov 30 17:49:34 2023
FCC: imap://[email protected]/Sent
X-Identity-Key: id1
X-Account-Key: account1
From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: test confirmation
To: [email protected], [email protected],
 [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
 [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>

... and try to read it:

$ mail --file file.mbox 
"/home/ubuntu/test/dir/file.mbox": 3 messages 3 new
>N   1 piro-test@clear-co Thu Nov 30 17:49  64/2549  test confirmation
 N   2 piro-test@clear-co Thu Nov 30 17:49  64/2549  test confirmation
 N   3 piro-test@clear-co Thu Nov 30 17:49  64/2549  test confirmation
? 
FCC: imap://[email protected]/Sent
X-Identity-Key: id1
X-Account-Key: account1
From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: test confirmation
To: [email protected], [email protected],
 [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
 [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2019 14:54:37 +0900
X-Mozilla-Draft-Info: internal/draft; vcard=0; receipt=0; DSN=0; uuencode=0;
 attachmentreminder=0; deliveryformat=4
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:69.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/69.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
 boundary="------------26A45336F6C6196BD8BBA2A2"
Content-Language: en-US
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--------------26A45336F6C6196BD8BBA2A2
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
? q
Held 3 messages in /home/ubuntu/test/dir/file.mbox

... and it works.