LPM: filtering

[Frank Price]

Hi LexPM,

I want to text-wrap a string to 50 columns before printing it to
sendmail.  In the shell, I'd do this:  

  echo "Really long string ..." | fmt -50 | mail 

How can I do the same in perl?  I tried something like the following,
essentially from the Cookbook, but it just printed to my terminal's
stdout and then hung until I ctrl-D.  I realize I could use a temp
array to hold the formatted output, but for some reason this seems
more "elegant" -- is there any way to make it work?

-Frank.

	$width = 50;
	$string = "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of \
		their country!  E Pluribus Unix, and all that!  This is a very \
		very very long string, ain't it?";

	&fmt($string, $width);

	open(SM, "| /usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t") or die "Can't open sendmail: $!\n";
	print SM "To: blah at blah.com\n\n";
	while (<>) {
		print SM $_;
	}
	close STDIN;
	close SM;
	exit;

	sub fmt {
		my ($s, $w) = @_;
		return if $pid = open(STDOUT, "|-"); # we're left w/ the child
		die "Cannot fork: $!\n" unless defined $pid;
		open(FMT, "| /usr/bin/fmt -$w") or die "Can't use fmt: $!\n";
			print FMT $string;
		close FMT;
		exit;
	}