Malformed Headers due to using scalar for address

jerrygarciuh has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

In my quest for laziness I am trying to acquire habits which make my code modular such as making the bits that may uh vary into variables.
When I altered this code:

open  MAIL,'|mail mena@uranus.com' || die "mail problem : $!";
      print MAIL "$user changed the menu $words.\n";
      close MAIL;
[download]

like so:

open  MAIL,'|mail $mail' || die "mail problem : $!";
      print MAIL "$user changed the menu $words.\n";
      close MAIL;
[download]

and declared $mail like so at the beginning of script: my $mail ='menu@uranus.com';

I get Malformed mail headers in my error log. Can someone advise me as to how I might specify the mail addie as a scalar?
TIA
jg

Comment on Malformed Headers due to using scalar for address Select or Download Code

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Re: Malformed Headers due to using scalar for address by Chmrr (Vicar) on Sep 21, 2001 at 07:37 UTC
Two problems: Single quotes don't interpolate variables. Make that `"\|mail $mail"` for starters.. Secondly, you're using \|\| instead of `or`. \|\| binds much tighter than `or`, causing your line to be parsed as follows: `open MAIL, ("\|mail $mail" \|\| die "mail problem: $!");` [download] ..which is probably not what you want. Make it: `open MAIL, "\|mail $mail" or die "Mail problem: $!";` [download] to make it do the Right Thing. perl -pe '"I lo`+$^X$\"$]!$/"=~m%(.)%s;$_=$1;y^+*`^ ve^#$&V"+@( NO CARRIER'	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Malformed Headers due to using scalar for address by earthboundmisfit (Chaplain) on Sep 21, 2001 at 07:32 UTC
Did you mean to single quote the variable? open (MAIL,"\|mail $mail") \|\| die "mail problem : $!"; update: added parens per Chmrr's point below	[reply]
Re: Malformed Headers due to using scalar for address by jlongino (Parson) on Sep 21, 2001 at 07:33 UTC
I think you want `"\|mail $mail"`, not `'\|mail $mail'`. The single quotes do not interpolate the data value, but the double quotes do. `@a=split??,'just lose the ego and get involved!'; for(split??,'afqtw{\|~'){print $a[ord($_)-97]}`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Malformed Headers due to using scalar for address by mandog (Curate) on Sep 21, 2001 at 09:43 UTC
You might also check out `perldoc -m net::smtp` [download] This has the advantage on not requiring you to run on a machine with the "mail" program in your path. --mandog	[reply] [d/l]