Bash Script send one email after a loop

hotdang · 03-13-2014, 06:51 PM

I created a bash script that gets a file formats it, sends an email to the user(s), however, for whatever reason, it will send an email per line with all of the lines in it, so essentially the user will get 10 duplicate emails with the same 10 results. I've modified the script to put the results of each user into a file with the user's email address, but I'm not sure how to limit the script to send only one email on however many lines there is for each user. Please see what I have, I'd appreciate any suggestions.

Code:

printf "${EMAIL%%@*},\n\n$MESSAGE\n\n$DETAIL" | mailx -r admin@admin.com -s "test" "$EMAIL"
        DETAIL=''
done

Is there any way I can have some sort of function or something that will only allow to send one email? I'm a bit stumped as to how to fix it.

grail · 03-13-2014, 08:37 PM

I think I must have missed something

If you have the mailx in a loop, surely you would understand that it will send how ever many emails the loop performs iterations?

If you only want to send one email, don't put in a loop.

Like I said at the start, I am a little lost, would you mind explaining a little further?

hotdang · 03-13-2014, 08:58 PM

Sorry for the confusion. The problem is...I have a list of user IDs and corresponding data. The script has to loop through the data, and essentially send out an email with the list of items per user. However, right now, when I run the script, instead of getting 1 email with say 50 items. It's sending each user 50 emails with 50 items, essentially a lot of duplicate emails. I'd like to know if there is a way for me to not send tons of duplicate emails, instead 1 email with the 50 items. Hope that clarifies.

grail · 03-14-2014, 01:26 AM

Ok ... So I follow a little better

So my next question would be, where are the items coming from?

My initial thought is to place the pipe to mailx on the end of the loop creating the items:

Code:

for EMAIL in email1 email2 ...
do
    while / for ...
    do
        <create / get list of items to be sent>
    done | mailx -r admin@admin.com -s "test" "$EMAIL"
done

chrism01 · 03-14-2014, 01:31 AM

Of course it would be a lot easier if you posted the script ...