You should really consider using a module for this, piping to Sendmail et al can be problematic and is not considered a good practice. There are a number of Perl modules that will send e-mail (and attachments) directly via SMTP, and allow you to do so with less code. My personal favorite is Mail::Sender, but Mime::Lite is also quite popular, and there are many others that can be found by searching CPAN.