Peter vmail@mycircuit.org:
Is there a way to make cron use a different mail programm, say nail instead of the default mail program. I found various env vars (MAIL, MAILPATH) related to email but none to specify the mail program itself.
I don't know, if I get your question quite right...
You mean another program to read the mails cron sends to you?
Are you doing this? % mail
If so, you can use about every mail user agent, you want to. Just tell it, where the mailbox is that gets all the mails from cron.
Unless you did change the default setup (and it sounds like you didn't), it is likely to be in /var/spool/mail/<username>; which is an mbox type file, that is supported by virtually every MUA out there.
If I did not understand your question correctly, rephrase.
Regards, Frank