Mail from a shell script?

[Ryan Sommers]

I'm attempting to have a few shell scripts email output. I'm running into
a few problems and was wondering if there were any ways to overcome them
in a shell script or whether I'll have to go to perl or not. (Note, shell
doesn't matter, I've been using sh but recently went to bash since sh on
solaris (one of the machines the scripts get used on) doesn't support the
-e expression for test(1)).

First problem I ran into. I'm attempting to send the mail via `which
mail`. I first was going to attempt to concatenate the message via
message=${message}$'\n'other line However, this strips the newlines
out of the variable (both sh and bash). I then tried using the string
redirection in bash/sh and same thing happened.

My next thought was to open an fd through which to pipe output since the
shells support it. However, it seems they only support opening a file for
read/write, not a pipe.

So, my ultimate question is, is there any way to send an email from a
shell script without creating a wrapper script that pipes the output of
one script into the mail program. Ie script1 contains only script2 | mail
recip.

Ryan
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: Mail from a shell script?

[Richard Lynch]

Ryan Sommers wrote:
 First problem I ran into. I'm attempting to send the mail via `which
 mail`. I first was going to attempt to concatenate the message via
 message=${message}$'\n'other line However, this strips the newlines
 out of the variable (both sh and bash). I then tried using the string
 redirection in bash/sh and same thing happened.

Things I would try:

Use \\n so that the first pass eats up \\ to product \ and then you have
\n where you want it.

Paste in a literal new-line (control-v/control-m in vi) so that you don't
have to rely on \n to work.

Also, in man 5 crontab there is reference to using %% or somesuch for
newlines in mail.  I'm not sure if that's a cron thing or a mail thing,
but it may be useful.

Dislaimer:  All of this comes from Linux/PHP experience, and not so much
FreeBSD.  YMMV.

-- 
Like Music?
http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm

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Re: Mail from a shell script?

[Jez Hancock]

On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 11:31:55 -0600 (MDT), Ryan Sommers
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 First problem I ran into. I'm attempting to send the mail via `which
 mail`. I first was going to attempt to concatenate the message via
 message=${message}$'\n'other line However, this strips the newlines
 out of the variable (both sh and bash). I then tried using the string
 redirection in bash/sh and same thing happened.

I believe this happens because the default input field separator (the
environment variable $IFS) is set to space by default and so newlines
are just 'squashed'.  Effectively all newlines are stripped out.

As a test you can try this:

-snip-
#!/bin/sh
message=Hi!

This is a test.

Another line.

Last line.

# OFS=$IFS
# IFS=
echo $message
# IFS=$OFS
-snip-

If you run the script once with the commented lines, you should see
the same problem you've encountered already.  Newlines are replaced
with spaces.

However if you then remove the comments so that the $IFS variable is
unset before echoing the message (first saving the original value to
$OFS) and run it, the script should display the lines as intended,
newlines intact.  Finally the last commented line resets $IFS to it's
original value - script execution can be messed up later if you don't
do this.


 My next thought was to open an fd through which to pipe output since the
 shells support it. However, it seems they only support opening a file for
 read/write, not a pipe.
 
 So, my ultimate question is, is there any way to send an email from a
 shell script without creating a wrapper script that pipes the output of
 one script into the mail program. Ie script1 contains only script2 | mail
 recip.

You can always try this as well to find scripts that contain the kind
of code you want to emulate:

file /usr/local/bin/* | grep Bourne | cut -f1 -d: | xargs grep mail

which gives you a list of bourne shell scripts residing in
/usr/local/bin that contain reference to the string 'mail' - those
scripts that might contain mailer code.

Running this now I remember checking out the 'flea' script before for
an example before - another is the freebsd problem report script -
send-pr.  I think those scripts cat the message content out to a
temporary file first and then pipe that file back to the sendmail
command - or some variation on that theme.

-- 
Jez Hancock
 - System Administrator / PHP Developer

http://munk.nu/
http://jez.hancock-family.com/  - Another FreeBSD Diary
http://ipfwstats.sf.net/- ipfw peruser traffic logging
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