Using Mailx

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

In my perl script, I have following lines,

Format REPORT = 
Test
.

Sub one
{
      open(REPORT,">output.txt");
      write(REPORT);
#trying to send mail using this output.txt file
     open(FILE,"output.txt");
     system("mailx -s \"Testing Report\" name@company.com<$FILE");
}
[download]

I am getting error message 'no message' when I execute the program. When I use this same mailx at the shell level, it sends the mail with the content in the file What I am doing wrong in the code?

Comment on Using Mailx Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Mailx question by Anonymous Monk on Jul 01, 2000 at 09:25 UTC
You are using $FILE in your `system()` call, which you don't define, but you do have an `open FILE, "<", "output.txt"` right above it, so I think that you think that using `$FILE` at the end of the system command will use output.txt as the input, which is incorrect. The correct code would be `system "mailx -s \"Testing Report\" name@company.com < output.txt";` [download] You could also open a pipe with `open MAILX, "\| mailx -s \"Testing Report\" name@company.com";` [download] and write to MAILX to bypass creating the file altogether.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Mailx question by Anonymous Monk on Jul 01, 2000 at 11:51 UTC
The security-minded answer is "don't ever use mailx". It's a big security hole waiting to happen since you cannot disable tilde escaping.	[reply]
Re^2: Mailx question by Anonymous Monk on Jan 11, 2011 at 07:57 UTC
Tilde escaping is disabled as soon as mailx gets input from a "non tty". So if you pipe the input into mailx, tilde escaping should be off.	[reply]
Re: Using Mailx by Anonymous Monk on Sep 02, 2004 at 08:02 UTC
try this: `open MAIL, "\| mailx -s '$Subject' -r ReplyAddress $MailAddress"; print MAIL $MailMessage; close MAIL;` [download]	[reply] [d/l]


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