GMail - check new messages from the command line

Let's not pull the cat by the tail. Straight to the point

curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | wc -l

The result will be the number of new letters in your inbox.



Update: the command can be simplified to

curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | awk -F '|' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}'

Thanks for the Wolverine Update tip : and even easier

curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | grep -c ""

hints onix74

The commands used should be familiar to the sophisticated linux user. For the inexperienced, a brief explanation of what the parts of this line do.
curl - here gets the page at the given address. In this case, it is RSS feed
tr -d '\ n' - removes
awk line breaks - “bites” the necessary parts (the awk language is generally special in various kinds of line parsing. Such a replacement for the regular)
wc -l - count the number of lines

And if the command complicate and parse the output a little, then you can get more information: the sender and the subject of the letter.

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