#!/bin/bash
MESSAGE="Line one. /n"
MESSAGE="$MESSAGE Line two. /n"
MESSAGE="$MESSAGE Line three."
echo $MESSAGE | mail -s "test" "[email protected]"
Is that how I should get each line, on its own line?
-
Jim, welcome to StackOverflow. Please remember to format your code samples by selecting them and hitting the "code" button (the one with ones and zeros on it).Jonathan Feinberg– Jonathan Feinberg2010-02-16 19:14:23 +00:00Commented Feb 16, 2010 at 19:14
-
1Thanks for the code button tip :)Jim– Jim2010-02-16 20:05:52 +00:00Commented Feb 16, 2010 at 20:05
Add a comment
|
3 Answers
Use a heredoc.
mail -s "test" "[email protected]" << END_MAIL
Line one.
Line two.
Line three.
END_MAIL
answered Feb 16, 2010 at 19:16
Matthew Flaschen
286k53 gold badges523 silver badges554 bronze badges
1 Comment
Dennis Williamson
If you quote the first delimiter (here
END_MAIL) it will prevent parameter expansion, command substitution, etc., which may be desirable.Change:
echo $MESSAGE | mail -s "test" "[email protected]"
To:
echo -e $MESSAGE | mail -s "test" "[email protected]"
1 Comment
Aaron D
This should be the accepted answer. The
-e switch expands the \n newline characters as expected and is easier to use in a script on a single line than the heredoc method.The heredoc advice is good, plus you might want to consider using mailx for which there exists a Posix standard or perhaps sendmail which will exist if the mailer is either sendmail or postfix. (I'm not sure about qmail.)
Unless using sendmail, it's also a good idea to set the MAILRC variable to /dev/null to bypass the user's configuration script, if any.
1 Comment
Norman Ramsey
I'm a big fan of using
sendmail in shell scripts. +1