To decrease the amount of system resources your Pine process consumes, you should keep your INBOX (/var/spool/mail file) size at a minimum. If you find your INBOX has gotten out of hand - here's some steps to follow to help you sort your INBOX into other folders.

To be able to use these tips you need to have enable-aggregate-command-set set in your Pine config. To do this, you can either set it (x) in the Pine SETUP / (C) Config: menu, or you can edit your ~/.pinerc file and add enable-aggregate-command-set, in the feature-list=.

Once you are sure you have enabled enable-aggregate-command-set, start pine with the -i option (to enter into your INBOX immediately), or start pine and from the main menu, type L (or l for List) to view your folders, and choose to view INBOX.

Once in INBOX (or whichever folder you want to filter mail in)...

• Type ";" to get the prompt: SELECT criteria:
  
  Choose what you would like to sort on (such as date, text, message number, etc.) - for example, if you wanted to move all mail from fred@cs.ucsd.edu, type T (or t for Text).
  
• Type "T" to sort by Text: from,to, subject, all text, Cc, recipients etc.
  
  If you wanted to sort on mail from fred@cs.ucsd.edu, type F (or f for From), and when prompted, type fred@cs.
  
  OR Type "D" for date, and so on.
  
  Once the messages have been selected an 'X' will appear by all the selected messages.
• Type "A" (or a for Action).
  
  You will be prompted to choose one of several actions.
• Type "S" (or s for Save).
  
  You will then be prompted to choose a folder to save the selected messages in, such as fred.
  If a folder fred does not exist, it will ask if you wish to create it (y).

Pine will tell you N messages save and deleted, where N is the number of messages moved and a D will appear next to all the messages that were moved.

When you quit pine, it will ask if you want to expunge the deleted messages. Be sure to say yes, y (default), in order to decrease your INBOX size. When you start pine the next time, the saved messages will appear only in the folder you moved them to.

Once your email is sorted into folders, you can use procmail to automatically keep this organization.