Hello. This is my first post.

I have been working on a program that should notify me of certain things via email. I seek comments on the solution described in the code below.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# $Id: mailtest.pl,v 1.1 2001/08/10 19:32:21 jamgill Exp $

# this little  ditty demonstrates using /bin/mail from
# within a perl program.  it sends emaill to the address
# with a subject line of the program's name and a message
# of "hello world" and the date.

use strict;

my $binmail = "/bin/mail";
my $address = 'my_address@my.corneroftha.net';
my $message;
my $subject = $0;

### Main:

$message = &generate_message($message);

`$binmail -t $address <<STOP
Subject: $subject

hello world.

$message
STOP`;

print "sent message with subject $0 to $address\n";

### Subs:
sub generate_message {
        my $timestamp = `date`;
        return($timestamp);
}
[download]

There are some restrictions that have brought me to /bin/mail: first, This will run on unix boxes with very little access to any modules that are not already installed. second, sendmail will probably not be available.

And the &generate_message, well ... that's just a placeholder for now.

Any comments on sending mail? Is this the best way to do it? Is this a decent way to do it?