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Perl sending e-mail

What is the best way to send the same e-mail message to a defined list of e-mail addresses?

The script below only seems to work with two e-mail addresses. If I add a third, the e-mail script doesn't work -- only one recipient gets the e-mail.

Can you explain what could be wrong with the $recipient variable containing a list of e-mail addresses? Should they be separated by commas or wrapped in double-quotes instead of single quotes? I've tried different variations but I can't seem to get it to work with more than two e-mail addresses. Ugh!

open(FILE,"surveyresults/results.txt");
@indata = <FILE>;
close(FILE);
foreach $i (@indata) {
$reply .= $i;
}

$recipient = 'email1@mydomain.com; email2@mydomain.com; email3@mydomain.com';

open (MAIL, "|$mailprog -t -oi") || die "Can't open mail program\n";
print MAIL "To: $recipient\n";
print MAIL "From: Me\n";
print MAIL "Subject: Survey\n";
print MAIL "Content-type: text/plain;\n\n";
print MAIL "$reply";
print MAIL "\n\n";
close MAIL;
exit;

giltjr

What mail program are you using?

marcparillo

ASKER

'usr/bin/sendmail'

giltjr

I could not get two to work with semi-colons seperating the e-mail addresses. I had to use comma's, so you may want to try:

$recipient = 'email1@mydomain.com, email2@mydomain.com, email3@mydomain.com';

in fact I got an error message when using semi-colons

marcparillo

ASKER

You're right, commas work over semi-colons. But what I'm discovering is when the e-mail is sent to one recipient, the message gets sent quickly, in a matter of seconds. When you add just two more names to the list, it takes up to five minutes for the e-mails to go through. Is this common or should there be no delay?

giltjr

Are all of the e-mail address to users within the same domain or are they different domain?

What are you measuring? Most e-mail clients poll the e-mail server every so many minutes. So if you were to send e-mail to 3 different people within the same e-mail domain, the e-mail may appear to arrive at different time based on when each users e-mail client checks to see if there is any new e-mail.

Example: I use Mozilla as my e-mail client and I have it configured to check for new e-mail every 10 minutes, so if you were to send me e-mail 1 second after Mozilla check, it will appeare to me as if it took 9 minutes and 59 seconds for your e-mail to get to me.

marcparillo

ASKER

Interesting --
It's a mix of domains -- so that would explain why some e-mails arrive faster than others.

giltjr

Yes. Think of it this way, it is "mail". Say you send out 3 letters to 3 different people in 3 different locations. Will they all arrive at the same time? No.

Now if they were all within the same domain it would be more like sending 3 letters in a single envlope. The envolope would arrive at the location at the same time, but the 3 people may actually see it at differnt times based on when somebody delivers the indvidual letters (like each person e-mail client checking for new mail).

marcparillo

ASKER

That's a great way of explaining it, thanks.

I've been testing the speed and reliability of e-mail with this simple script -- does it look right to you?

my $recipient = "myemailaddress\@earthlink.net";
$mailprog = '/usr/sbin/sendmail';
open (MAIL, "|$mailprog -t -oi") || print "Can't open mail program\n";
print MAIL "To: $recipient\n";
print MAIL "From: News Channel\n";
print MAIL "Subject: Archives Request Confirmation\n";
print MAIL "Content-type: text/plain;\n\n";
print MAIL "Testing E-mail";
print MAIL "\n\n";
close MAIL;

marcparillo

ASKER

THIS SCRIPT RETURNS AN ERROR

#!/usr/bin/perl

$mailprog = '/usr/sbin/sendmail';

$recipient = 'myemail@address.com';
open (MAIL, "|$mailprog -t -oi") || die "Can't open mail program\n";
print MAIL "To: $recipient\n";
print MAIL "From: Test\n";
print MAIL "Subject: Test\n";
print MAIL "Content-type: text/plain;\n\n";
print MAIL "Testing";
print MAIL "\n\n";
close MAIL;

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

giltjr

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