First you asked how Sendmail used .forward files to forward a user's mail - which I answered. Then you asked , but how do I do that selectively for different directories - I got very confused. So before you describe the process that takes these messages, creates unique file names, and determines which directory to store them in based off some criteria - let me make a few assumptions:

# Set up your loop here
next unless open (MESSAGE, "message.file");
my @message = <MESSAGE>;
my $mail = Mail::Audit->new(data => \@message);
my $recip = 'email@address.com';
$mail->replace_header('To', $recip);
$mail->resend($recip);
next;
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I just want to point out that depending on your MTA mail can be delivered to a maildir format box instead of mbox format, in which case you would have multiple messages each in their own file inside of one directory.

of course you could also have your mail delivered to the moon dependant on your MTA :P

tedrek,
I will not to pretend to be an expert at Sendmail, but that is the MTA referenced in previous threads. It has been my experience on every *nix box I have been on that it is a single mbox file. I also admit that Sendmail has been around forever and could probably be configured to cook dinner if you wanted to - so point taken. It doesn't change the fact that this isn't the "out of the box" configuration for Sendmail, so it caught myself (as well as others) off guard.

Cheers - L~R

Hey L~R,

Thanks for your patience. You are correct in your assumptions. There are messages in a temp folder received via Sendmail, that I would like to forward to another account. The messages have not been modified. They are simply directly forwarded. It's basically like an auto forwarding script out of one directory. I'm not sure what the exact format of email messages are in a folder, so I assume each message was its own file. Please correct me on that if I am wrong. I have integrated your code with a modified version of the script I was writing. I'm pretty sure there are things wrong with it so please let me know. =).

use strict;
use Cwd;
use Lite;
use Mail:Audit;

my $dirpath;
my $divider = 0;
my $input;
my $mailprog = '/usr/lib/sendmail';
my $recipient= 'recip@email.com'; 
my $sender = 'jc@email.com';
my $dirpath = '/var/mail/user/temp'; 

    unless ( chdir $dirpath ) #change to directory 
    { 
    exit(0);
    }
    unless (opendir( CHANGEME, $dirpath )){ 
       # print "\nCan't open $dirpath. ";
    exit (0);
    } 
#find all directory contents OTHER than those that begin in . 
    my @dirContents = grep !/^\./, readdir(CHANGEME); 
    if(!@dirContents){
      #  print "No files were found inside $dirpath\n";
       exit (0);
    }
#forward each email message to recipient
   foreach my $dirContent ( @dirContents ) 
   { 
     open (MESSAGE, "$dirContent");
     my @message = <MESSAGE>;
     my $mail = Mail::Audit->new(data => \@message);
     my $recip = $recipient;
$mail->replace_header('To', $recip);
$mail->resend($recip);
    
   `rm $dirContent`;
   }
   closedir ( CHANGEME );
   exit (0);
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Could this also be done using MIME::Lite? Thanks for the tips!

jc

jc23,
Ok - you look like you are well on your way. I have a few points:
• my $recip = $recipient; is redundent. Just define $recipient as $recip at the top.
• `rm $dirContent`; You should never use backticks in a void context. Use system if you are not concerned with capturing the output. In this case, I feel you should use neither. Perl has unlink.
• I would recommend Perltidy for help in indenting/formatting.
• A lot of your variables look to be used only once. If this is left over stuff, take the time to clean it up. It can help troubleshooting later.

  Finally - you still haven't described what process gets those messages to the files in the directory in the first place:

• Is it a special Sendmail configuration?
• Is it an alias that is actually a pipe to a script?
• Is it something else?
  It is possible you could solve this problem earlier by putting in a fork: Write to this directory as well as forward a copy to a different recipient. This is probably the best thing to do anyway.

  Cheers - L~R

Reinventing the wheel and all that. I sound like a broken record, I guess, but I have some questions.

Q: It looks to me like if the $dirContent file has more than one message in it, you won't forward other than the first messages. Is that the case?

Q: Are you just forwarding ALL of the mail sent to a given user? If so, how is this superior to a .forward file in the user's home directory that contains: recip@email.com?

Q: If you are filtering mail to a user based on some criteria, how is this superior to using procmail? e.g. a .procmailrc file that filters for Perlmonks in the subject:

:0:
* ^Subject:.*Perlmonks.*
! recip@email.com
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If all you are trying to do is to take some raw email messages in files and forward them to another account, then look at using formail. It is installed along side sendmail, and is useful for parsing email messages.

I have used the following to send an entire mbox file to another user:

cat <mboxfile> | formail +1 -ds sendmail -oem <dest-address>
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I admit that I have not read your other questions, so I may be off base with what you are trying to achieve, but I always think it wise to look at the tools you have available with your mail system before starting to write your own...

- Cees

You need to explain what format your messages are actually in. First you mention that the mail files are binary, then you state that the files are in "mail format". To me, "mail format" implies Unix mbox format which is a simple text-based format to store mail on a Unix system. What program created these files? Outlook or Outlook Express? Try looking on CPAN for Outlook. If you tell us what mail program created these files, we could be more help.

HTH

Finally got it to work. Thank you everyone for your helpfulness. I ended up using MIME::Lite. It was actually less complicated. I just had to open each file and parse the body. Thanks L~R for the pointers and your patience.

Sincerely,

jc