using 'echo' in a system statment in php

evilchild · 09-23-2004, 04:05 AM

I'm trying to send an email from a php script, using a system statement that executes 'echo' and ports the output of the echo command into 'mail' command like so

Code:

$name = "Mr. X";
$email = "me@my.domain"; 
$mailmsg = "Hey, how are you doing $name";
system("echo '$mailmsg'  | mail -s 'Hi' $email ");

but the problem here is when i use echo to echo the contents of the variable $mailmsg, it doesn't seem to work, but the mail part of the statement works, so this script results in sending a empty null message to the email contained in the $email variable. Is there some thing i'm missing here.

Hko · 09-23-2004, 05:03 AM

To my surprise it did work on my computer. I would think that in this line:

Code:

system("echo '$mailmsg'  | mail -s 'Hi' $email ");

PHP would not be able to substitute the $mailmsg variable because of the quoting. But it did work...

Anyways, I would have construct a string containing the command first, and then execute it with system(). This also gives you an opportunity to put an "echo $command" in between, to check that what actually gets executed.

Code:

$name = "Mr. X";
$email = "heiko@localhost"; 
$mailmsg = "Hey, how are you doing $name";
	
$command = 'echo "'. $mailmsg .'" | mail -s "Hi" '. $email;
echo "Debug: ". $command ."<br />\n";
system($command);

For larger or more complex mail mesages I'd probably use popen() (check the manual).

Cedrik · 09-23-2004, 08:02 AM

why not use the integred mail() function as it seems you use sendmail

PHP Code:


			
$name = "Mr. X";

$email = "heiko@localhost"; 

$mailmsg = "Hey, how are you doing $name";

mail($email, "Hi", $mailmsg);

evilchild · 09-23-2004, 02:27 PM

thanks, that works. I never heard of the mail() function in php, we're always learning something new.