biff informs the system whether you want to be notified when mail arrives during the current terminal session.
Options supported by
biff:
When mail notification is enabled, the header and first few lines of the message will be printed on your screen whenever mail arrives. A “
biff y” command is often included in the file
.login or
.profile to be executed at each login.
biff operates asynchronously. For synchronous notification use the
MAIL variable of
sh(1) or the
mail variable of
csh(1).