catbox will pipe every message from an mbox file as an input to a shell command. A message counter is available as a shell variable $NR.

If no file is specified, catbox will read from stdin.

Inspired by caeml.

go install github.com/konimarti/catbox@latest

Usage: catbox [-h|-c <cmd>] <mbox>

Add this line to the [filters] section in your aerc.conf:

application/mbox=catbox -c caeml | colorize

The following examples assume that you have a file test.mbox in a valid mbox format in your local directory.

• Show the message number counter:

catbox -c 'echo $NR' test.mbox`

• Pipe every mbox message to caeml:

catbox -c caeml test.mbox

• Save every mbox message in a separate file

catbox -c 'cat > message_$NR' test.mbox

• Print only the first ten messages:

catbox -c "awk -v cbnr=\$NR '{if (cbnr>10) print}'" test.mbox

• Read from stdin and only display the full message headers:

cat test.mbox | catbox -c "sed -n '1,/^\\s*$/p'"