Which is the best way?

Just my $.02. Take it with a grain of salt.

Cheers,

Brent

I guess it depends most on what the future might bring. This works but you won't be able to carry everything to a winbox and expect it to run there. With MIME::Lite you got a much better chance at that.
Another question you may ask yourself is: ,,What if someone else has to go into my code''. With ,,mail'' you expect that person to also understand something about linux, where the MIME::Lite path would only require someone to know all about perl. ;)
And then the third, if you're supposed to use MIME::Lite... I guess you're supposed to use MIME::Lite.

The best approach is the one that gets your job done quickly enough to make your boss happy.

But at the risk of further muddying the waters, can I recommend that you take a look at the modules from the Perl Email Project.

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
use warnings;
use strict;
use MIME::Lite;
use Net::SMTP;


my $from = 'blee@blah.com';
my $to = 'blee@blah.com';

my $msg = MIME::Lite->new(
From => $from,
TO => $to,
Subject => 'Testing Text Message ',
Type    =>'multipart/mixed',
);

$msg->attach( Type =>'TEXT',
              Data     =>"Mime message with attachment, sent with Net:
+:SMTP"
            );

$msg->attach(Type     =>'image/gif',
            Path     =>'1.jpg',
            Filename =>'1.jpg',
            Disposition => 'attachment'
            );

$msg->attach(Type     =>' text/tab-separated-values',
            Path     =>'./2.csv',
            Filename =>'2.csv',
            Disposition => 'attachment'
            );

my $Servername = "mail.blah.com";
my $smtp = Net::SMTP->new($Servername);

$smtp->mail($from);
$smtp->to($to);
my $msg_stringified = $msg->as_string();
$smtp -> data( $msg_stringified ) || warn("error sending email message
+:" . $msg_stringified );
$smtp -> quit;
[download]

 use Mail::Sender;
 $sender = new Mail::Sender;

$sender->MailFile({to => 'some@address.com',
  subject => 'Here is the file',
  msg => "I'm sending you the list you wanted.",
  file => 'filename.txt'});
[download]

I've been using MIME::Lite:TT and MIME::Lite::TT::HTML recently and love them. I even wrote a small howto article on the subject.