Several people have sent me methods for checking whether or not they had new e-mail. Most of them relied on programs that aren't on every system. Then I received the following code from Henrik Veenpere: .:: start.me ::. .:: 6944fae06decc.site123.me ::. [Google Scholar: Flask] .:: pg88h8.hashnode.space ::. .:: www.link-man.org ::. .:: partners.skanska.com ::. .:: rentry.co ::. .:: ko-fi.com ::. [Library: IMAP] cat $MAIL |grep -c ^Message-. This is simple and elegant, and I like it.