You might want to go to a higher level module Net::SMTP which has this all worked out already. This module comes standard with libnet

You can see the example code is much cleaner and smaller

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
    
use Net::SMTP;

$smtp = Net::SMTP->new('mailhost');
    
$smtp->mail($ENV{USER});
$smtp->to('postmaster');
    
$smtp->data();
$smtp->datasend("To: postmaster\n");
$smtp->datasend("\n");
$smtp->datasend("A simple test message\n");
$smtp->dataend();
    
$smtp->quit;
[download]

Update: you can Install modules into your home directory

grep

Just me, the boy and these two monks, no questions asked.