what your script is doing is: waiting for something to come on input (STDIN). this means you're supposed to call your script like this:

perl strip.pl < file.msg
[download]

cheers,
Aldo

King of Laziness, Wizard of Impatience, Lord of Hubris

Okay, I understand that. But what i don't understand is how do I access the mail messages to run this on them? e-mail is sent to me@localhost.localdomain and sendmail is running. typing mail at the command prompt (or whatever the Linux version is called) says I have n messages. (where n is a number) Also I read someware else that you can create a `.forward` file in the root of your home directory to automate this. (the desired operation as there will be a dedicated e-mail server for this - currently being tested on a standalone laptop)

"|IFS=' '&&exec perl /home/kev/Documents/webtest/mail/strip.pl||exit 7
+5"
[download]

(modified from another one) This just loses the mail (Evolution or mail can't find it). I'm guessing I would probably need to change this to something along the lines of

"|IFS=' '&&exec perl /home/kev/Documents/webtest/mail/strip.pl < file.
+msg ||exit 75"
[download]

Is this along the right lines?, and what would i need to put in the place of "file.msg"?

I've now worked out that to call the perl file i need to use the line

"| /home/me/Documents/webtest/mail/strip.pl < $1"
[download]

in the `.forward` file. I have also found the missing e-mails - they were in the root mail box. in the mail i have

--- The Following addresses had permanet fatal errors ----
"| /home/me/Documents/webtest/mail/strip.pl < $1"
(reason : service unavailble)
(expanded from : <me@localhost.localdomain>)

---- Transcript of session follows ----
451 4.0.0 hash map "generics": missing map file /etc/mail/genericstabl
+e.db: No such file or directory
smrsh : strip.pl not avalible for sendmail programs
554 5.0.0 Servive Unavalible

[Snip message headers, body and attachments]
[download]

How do i create "genericstable.db" and allow strip.pl to be avalible for sendmail programs?