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

Hey Monks,

I have a simple form that sends an email. Everything has been working fine for some time now, but when I added another name to the BCC list, the emails stopped coming. Here is a snippet: 
...
%mail = (
   SMTP => 'localhost',
   from => 'webform@xyz.com',
   to   => "ABCD <$emailAddress>",
   bcc  => 'myaddress\@xyz.com',
   subject => "License Form",
   );

    $boundary = "====" . time() . "====";
...

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I changed the above to include another BCC name, like so: 
   to   => "XYZ <$emailAddress>",
   bcc  => 'myaddress\@xyz.com, address1\@xyz.com',

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when I do this, the emails are no longer sent. Any ideas what might be causing this? Is this not the correct way to add a name? I have also tried something like this to no avail: 
bcc => "BCC list <myaddress\@xyz.com, address1\@XYZ.com>",

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Thanks for the help!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Mail not sending
by jhourcle (Prior) on Mar 04, 2005 at 20:03 UTC

    Don't escape the @ in a single quoted string. You should either use:

    bcc  => 'myaddress@xyz.com'

    or

    bcc   => "myaddress\@xyz.com"

    For debugging things like this, I'd sugest having the program write out the mail being generated to a file, rather than pushing it to sendmail, and taking a look at it. If you want everything in the 'To' line, use the format:

    to    => "ABCD <$emailaddress>, <myaddress\@xyz.com>"

    I thought e-mail addresses format was explained in RFC822/RFC2822, or RFC821/RFC2821, but I'm not seeing it.

    Update: the address specs were in RFC822 and RFC2822

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Re: Mail not sending
by trammell (Priest) on Mar 04, 2005 at 19:14 UTC
    I'm curious as to why you're escaping the "@" in the bcc entries, but not the From: entry. Does the email address need a literal "\"? Is your mailer interpreting the addresses somehow?
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Re: Mail not sending
by RazorbladeBidet (Friar) on Mar 04, 2005 at 19:03 UTC
    What program are you sending the mail with?
    --------------
    It's sad that a family can be torn apart by such a such a simple thing as a pack of wild dogs
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      I am talking directly to sendmail
      $SENDMAIL_CMD = '|/usr/lib/sendmail -t -oi';

      [download]
      here is my sendmail sub: 
      sub sendmail{
  my(%mail)= @_;

    open(MF, $SENDMAIL_CMD)  || print "Sendmail Error! ($!)\n";;

print MF<<__MAIL_EOF__;
From: $mail{from}
To:   $mail{to}
Bcc:  $mail{bcc}
Subject: $mail{subject}

$mail{body}

__MAIL_EOF__
}

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        Hi!

        Try escaping the comma separating your Bcc: addresses -- it may be interfering with the construction of the %mail hash..

        Will it work using
        bcc  => 'myaddress@xyz.com\, address1@xyz.com'

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        I'd guess you're being bitten by an inadvertent newline in your inputs. Have you considered using a module? I've had great luck with MIME::Lite over the years.
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Re: Mail not sending
by lakeTrout (Scribe) on Mar 04, 2005 at 20:43 UTC
    Thank you hsinclai and jhourcle. Both of those solutions worked! Thank you all for your help!
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