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

I am a newbie so please be patient... I am trying to send a mass email, but have been unsuccessful. The problem is with the way I have my variable $email setup. If I have $sender->to('myemail@somewhere.com' , 'hisemail@somewhere.com') it works. The Email.txt file is just a list of emails, one on each line. Thanks for any help 
open(EMAIL, "email.txt"); 
while(<EMAIL>){ 
        chomp; 
        my $val= $_; 
        push(@email, "'$val'");} 
close(EMAIL); 
my $email = join ",", @email; 
my %mail; 
open(MSG, "message.txt"); 
while (<MSG>){ 
        if ($_ =~ /^subject:(.*)/){ 
                $mail{'subject'} = $1;} 
        else{ 
                $mail{'msg'} .= $_;}} 
                                                   
my $sender = Net::SMTP->new ('mailhost', Debug=> 1); 
  $sender->mail('anywhere@home.com'); 
  $sender->to($email); 
  $sender->data(); 
  $sender->datasend ("From: Home\n");   
  $sender->datasend ("Subject: $mail{'subject'}\n\n"); 
  $sender->datasend ("\n"); 
  $sender->datasend ("$mail{'msg'}"); 
  $sender->dataend(); 
  $sender->quit();

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Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: cant send a mass email
by cees (Curate) on Mar 19, 2003 at 02:52 UTC

    Try something like the following (untested) code:

    use Mail::Bulkmail;

my ($subject, $message);
open(MSG, "message.txt"); 
while (<MSG>) { 
  if ($_ =~ /^[Ss]ubject:\s*(\S*)/) { 
     $subject = $1;
  } else { 
    $message .= $_;
  }
} 
close MSG;

my $bulk = new Mail::Bulkmail(
        Message      => $message,
        Subject      => $subject,
        From         => 'Home',
        LIST         => 'email.txt'
        use_envelope => 1,
);

$bulk->bulkmail();

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    If you have an older version of Mail::Bulkmail than you can simplify this even more by using the HFM (Headers From Message) feature that has dissapeared from version 3.x.

    use Mail::Bulkmail;

open(MSG, "message.txt"); 
undef $/;
my $message = <MSG>;
close MSG;
 
my $bulk = new Mail::Bulkmail(
        Message      => $message,
        From         => 'Home',
        LIST         => 'email.txt'
        use_envelope => 1,
        HFM          => 1,  # pull headers from message
);

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Re: cant send a mass email
by diotalevi (Canon) on Mar 19, 2003 at 00:12 UTC

    Do us a favor and explain what you plan to do with this. On its face it looks like you're asking for help with e-mail marketi spam.

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Re: cant send a mass email
by ibanix (Hermit) on Mar 19, 2003 at 01:20 UTC
    You didn't describe what your problem was. What happens? What's the error? It will help if you add 
    use warnings;
use strict;

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    to the start of your code. This will enable warnings and force you to declare your variables, which greatly aids in catching mistakes.

    Now, on the topic of your code: You're trying to send an email with one very long list of recipients. It's possible your email server will not honor this. You may want to try sending one email/address, like so (code UNTESTED): 
    use strict;
use warnings;

# Define constants
my $address_file = "email.txt";
my $message_text = "message.txt";
my $from_addr = "anywhere@home.com";
my $mailhost = "localhost";

# Always check to see if file opened or not
open(MSG, "$message_text") || die "Could not open $message_text! $!\n"
+;

my $subject;
my $body;

LINE: while(<MSG>) {
     if /^subject:(.*)/ { $subject = $1 and next LINE};
     $body .= $_;
}
close(MSG);

open(LIST, "$address_file") || die "Could not open $address_file! $!\n
+";

# Send an email for each address in the file
# Note we're not doing any validation on addresses
while(<LIST>) {
     chomp;
     
     my $sender = Net::SMTP->new("$localhost"); 
     $sender->mail("$from_addr"); 
     $sender->to("$_"); 
     $sender->data(); 
     $sender->datasend ("From: Home\n");   
     $sender->datasend ("Subject: $subject\n\n"); 
     $sender->datasend ("$body\n");
     $sender->dataend(); 
     $sender->quit(); 

}
close(LIST);

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    Hope this helps. Cheers,
    ibanix

    $ echo '$0 & $0 &' > foo; chmod a+x foo; foo;
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      I have to send a mass email to a group of people in my company. I have tested it out by sending it to my own email account and it worked. Is there a way to setup a variable with everyones email that will allow me to go through the scrip once rather than use a while loop? Thanks again for the help
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        Is there a way to setup a variable with everyones email that will allow me to go through the scrip once rather than use a while loop?

        Why does it matter? As I already said, your email server may refuse to send emails with an excessive number of recpienents. You are better left to sending one email per address.

        ibanix

        $ echo '$0 & $0 &' > foo; chmod a+x foo; foo;
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Re: cant send a mass email
by The Mad Hatter (Priest) on Mar 19, 2003 at 01:47 UTC
    I don't know anything about Net::SMTP, but might the problem be the single quotes you put around the address when you do push(@email, "'$val'");? Try using push(@email, $val); instead and see if it works.

    Update: Silly me, didn't realize the problem. Anyway, you could probably use an eval to solve the problem, but as others said, a loop would be easiest (and most reliable).

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