Email and ‘echo’ on Unix

[Richard Hart]

We encountered an error with using the ‘echo’ command when the message was very large.

eg

exec echo “$myMailData” | mail -s $mySubject $myGroup

I’ve replaced the ‘exec echo’ with a call to a procedure in our library code.  This procedure uses a pipe and puts.

eg

proc libEmail {aGlobals aTo aSubject aBody} {

       #

       # This procedure was created when ‘echo’ failed with a message that was too

       # large!

       # Open a pipe to the mail command

       #

   if {[catch {set myMailPipe [open “| mailx -s “$aSubject” “$aTo”” w]} myCatchErr]} {

       Print $aGlobals “libEmail: Cannot open pipe for [To: $aTo; Subject: $aSubject]! $myCatchErr ” E

       return {}

   }

       #

       # Write the email

       #

   if {[catch {puts $myMailPipe $aBody

                close $myMailPipe} myCatchErr]} {

       Print $aGlobals “libEmail: Cannot send mail for [To: $aTo; Subject: $aSubject]! $myCatchErr” E

       return {}

   }

   return ‘OK’

}

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