I am running linux (mandrake) and need to setup a script to send a test email every hour using cron. Cron is not my problem, the mail command is. I tried this:

mail "name@domain.com" -s "test email"

at this point I want "`date`" to be the body of the email and then send. But I can't get it to without manually doing `date` and the "Enter" and the "Control-D" and then go through the "Cc" of which I don't even want.

I am sure this is fairly simple but I am new to Linux and not up to speed on all the command switches, etc.

Thanks for any help.

Try to pipe input to the mail command. Try
if that doesn't work try adding a - at the end of the line above.