>> Right now I see it is not involved.
>
> So the time-out is not used when connecting to the mail server?
>
I was wrong. Indeed it is used. Look at mailutils/mail.c:
----
const FAST_FUNC char *command(const char *fmt, const char *param)
{
const char *msg = fmt;
if (timeout)
alarm(timeout);
----
So -w N would result in idling at most N seconds.
--
Vladimir