Hi,

Currently, I send the contents of a file by mail by typing:

mail someone@somewhere.com < some.file

But I can't type my own message using the above command to send with
the file. I checked the command line options for mail and there doesn't
seem to be an attachment parameter. Does anyone know how I can do this
through the command line?

Thanks.

"yusuf" <yusufm@gmail.com> writes:

> Currently, I send the contents of a file by mail by typing:
>
> mail someone@somewhere.com < some.file
>
> But I can't type my own message using the above command to send with
> the file. I checked the command line options for mail and there doesn't
> seem to be an attachment parameter. Does anyone know how I can do this
> through the command line?

Take a look at Shelldorado it has scripts to do things like that.

http://www.shelldorado.com/

Joe

On 2006-08-20, yusuf wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Currently, I send the contents of a file by mail by typing:
>
> mail someone@somewhere.com < some.file
>
> But I can't type my own message using the above command to send with
> the file. I checked the command line options for mail and there doesn't
> seem to be an attachment parameter. Does anyone know how I can do this
> through the command line?

{
cat ## read stdin
cat some.file
} | mail someone@somewhere.com

--
Chris F.A. Johnson, author <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)
===== My code in this post, if any, assumes the POSIX locale
===== and is released under the GNU General Public Licence

yusuf wrote:
> Currently, I send the contents of a file by mail by typing:
>
> mail someone@somewhere.com < some.file
>
> But I can't type my own message using the above command to send with
> the file. I checked the command line options for mail and there doesn't
> seem to be an attachment parameter. Does anyone know how I can do this
> through the command line?

You have to either built whole MIME message (with all boundaries and
everything) and pipe it to /usr/bin/mail (or directly
to /usr/sbin/sendmail -- after all, when you built it all yourself there is
not much mail can do for you). The other way would be to use some other
mail replacement -- nail is 100% replacement of mailx and it can do (among
other things) attachments.

Matěj

--
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23 Marion St. #3, (617) 876-1259, ICQ 132822213

As a rule of thumb, the more qualifiers there are before the name
of a country, the more corrupt the rulers. A country called The
Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably the last
place in the world you'd want to live.
-- Paul Graham discussing (not only) Nigerian spam
(http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html)

Le Sat, 19 Aug 2006 22:20:00 -0400, Chris F.A. Johnson a écrit:

> On 2006-08-20, yusuf wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Currently, I send the contents of a file by mail by typing:
>>
>> mail someone@somewhere.com < some.file
>>
>> But I can't type my own message using the above command to send with
>> the file. I checked the command line options for mail and there doesn't
>> seem to be an attachment parameter. Does anyone know how I can do this
>> through the command line?
>
> {
> cat ## read stdin
> cat some.file
> } | mail someone@somewhere.com

That's OK as the OP seems to send 7bit files (thru direct mail <)
but here's an idea of a small complement in case you have binaries.
I know it is dirty and it would be much better to use mimencode
than UUE but, that's for desperates cases where you don't have
metamail and you can't install them :-)
(besides if you have had metamail you would have used it
instead of this blob ;-)

-------------
$ cat mailx_in_shell
#!/bin/sh
###
Badfile () {
printf "\n\n File ${1} is empty or missing ...\n\n"
exit 2
}
Usage () {
printf "\n\n Usage: $0 adressee attachment\n\tType your message then Ctrl-D\n\n"
exit 1
}
###
[ $# -gt 1 ] || Usage
attachment="${2}"
adressee=${1}
sender="youlegaladdress@yourelayabledomain"
###
[ -s "${attachment}" ] || Badfile "${attachment}"
###
### This is if you post plaintext and dont need to send a binary
### ( printf "\n" && cat && cat "${attachment}" ) | /usr/lib/sendmail -v -f ${sender} ${adressee}
###
( printf "\n" && cat && printf "\n" && uuencode "${attachment}" "${attachment}" ) \
| /usr/lib/sendmail -v -f ${sender} ${adressee}

-------------

On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 09:57:10 -0400, Matej Cepl wrote:

> You have to either built whole MIME message (with all boundaries and
> everything) and pipe it to /usr/bin/mail (or directly
> to /usr/sbin/sendmail -- after all, when you built it all yourself there is
> not much mail can do for you). The other way would be to use some other
> mail replacement -- nail is 100% replacement of mailx and it can do (among
> other things) attachments.

Handy! Thx.

M4
--
Ah, the beauty of OSS. Hundreds of volunteers worldwide volunteering
their time inventing and implementing new, exciting ways for software
to suck. -- Toni Lassila in the Monastry