Help from bash guru needed

[leeoliveshackelford at surewest.net]

Good morning, dear FreeBSD enthusiast. Yesterday, at approximately 11:20
a.m. Pacific Daylight-Savings Time (1820 g.m.t.), I sent an electronic
message to FreeBSD-Questions requesting help to understand a .bashrc
script. This morning, I logged onto my electronic mail account to
discover that all messages received prior to 7:27 a.m. Pacific Daylight
Time (1427 g.m.t.), stored in all folders, approximately 3000 in number,
had been deleted by unknown process, persons, or entities. I telephoned
my internet service provider to complain. Its representative assured me
that all of his organizations's servers were working properly, and that
there was no way to retrieve the deleted messages, and that he was so
sorry. So, if you troubled to respond to my help request yesterday,
would you be kind enough to re-transmit your comments. Thank you. -- Lee