mailto

Overview

mailto is a very simple command line program for sending e-mail (not reading e-mail). It behaves somewhat like the UNIX `mailto' program. My motivation for writing this program was so that I could send e-mail messages from within shell scripts. In particular, I wanted a way to send my IP address in an e-mail message every time I connected to the Internet via a PPP connection.

Usage

   mailto [recipient]

   recipient - This parameter is optional if you are going to type in
               your message, but required if you are piping text from
               another source.

Examples

You might want to send a quick e-mail message.

   $ mailto
   To: user@host.net
   Subject: Good News
   Type a period (`.') on a line by itself to send this message.
   I've been looking for a mail program like this!
   .

   OR

   $ mailto user@host.net
   Subject: Bad News
   Type a period (`.') on a line by itself to send this message.
   I don't need another stinkin' mail program!
   .

You might want to send someone a text file.

   mailto user@host.net < mailto.C

Maybe you want to send someone a uuencoded file.

   uuencode mailto.zip mailto.zip | mailto user@host.net

From within your ppp-script, you might want to send someone your IP address.

   if [ $1 = "up" ]; then
      echo $4 | mailto user@host.net
   fi

Some Last Thoughts

I hope you find this program useful. If you are creative, I'm sure you can come up with some other neat e-mail tricks. I have included the source so that you can see how it works and change it to suit your own needs. Good luck.

Wesley Dungan
wesley@idsi.net


Last Modified: Wednesday, 18 March 1998 by Wesley Dungan