Check your unread Gmail from the command line

curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | sed -n "s/<title>$.*$<\/title.*name>$.*$<\/name>.*/\2 - \1/p"

Checks the Gmail ATOM feed for your account, parses it and outputs a list of unread messages. For some reason sed gets stuck on OS X, so here's a Perl version for the Mac:

curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | perl -pe 's/^<title>(.*)<\/title>.*<name>(.*)<\/name>.*$/$2 - $1/'

If you want to see the name of the last person, who added a message to the conversation, change the greediness of the operators like this:

curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | perl -pe 's/^<title>(.*)<\/title>.*?<name>(.*?)<\/name>.*$/$2 - $1/'

Sample Output

Contact Name - Email Subject
Contact Name2 - Email Subject2
(...)

By: postrational

2009-09-07 21:56:40

awk sed tr Linux perl sed awk macosx curl rss gmail

2 Alternatives + Submit Alt

Check your unread Gmail from the command line

Just an alternative with more advanced formating for readability purpose. It now uses colors (too much for me but it's a kind of proof-of-concept), and adjust columns. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
John Doe (doe@example.net):              I have found the meaning of life !!!
Suzanne Johnson (suzanne@example.com):   What do you think about 42 ?
Mom (mom@house.ws):                      You didn't accept my facebook invitation
```
3

curl -u username --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | awk 'BEGIN{FS="\n";RS="(</entry>\n)?<entry>"}NR!=1{print "\033[1;31m"$9"\033[0;32m ("$10")\033[0m:\t\033[1;33m"$2"\033[0m"}' | sed -e 's,<[^>]*>,,g' | column -t -s $'\t'

frntn · 2011-10-15 23:15:52 2
Check your unread Gmail from the command line
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

mtr www.google.com

slu4aen · 2014-10-08 06:55:32 6

What Others Think

Mac version works well too in i386 ;)

willemijns · 716 weeks and 2 days ago

shows only the first "from" name if there are multiple unread emails in a thread...

sitaram · 716 weeks and 2 days ago

Awesome command - have now added a wrapper function to my .bashrc

root · 716 weeks and 2 days ago

add /important to the atom feed url to only get your priority inbox

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Here they have shared the code that has to check the Gmail atom feed of an account. What we have to do is parse and this results in getting a list of unread messages. Due to certain reasons, we get stuck on OS X so here they have provided the pearl version of the Mac which will be useful for you Plant-Based Food Delivery Vancouver

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What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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