From spikeh at mweb.co.za  Wed Dec 22 06:42:32 2004
From: spikeh at mweb.co.za (Spike)
Date: Wed Dec 22 06:42:38 2004
Subject: [Za-pm] no STDIN
In-Reply-To: <1098785152.1113.45.camel@jackie.afribiz.co.za>
References: <1098785152.1113.45.camel@jackie.afribiz.co.za>
Message-ID: <6.2.0.14.2.20041222142504.04311350@pop3.mweb.co.za>

Hi All
I have a small perl script called "male" which is used in much the same 
way, with similar options as "mail".
That is you can do things like echo"boo" | mail spike@mweb.com
But male allows a few extra options that I find useful like you can set the 
reply address and Cc etc from the Command line too. i.e cat myfile.txt | 
male -c cc@mweb.com -r sender@spam.com spike@mweb.com

The most useful bit being the -a that allows me to send a file as an 
attachment. Now this is where my problem is. It all works fine as long as 
I  cat myfile | male ....  or echo"my message to you" | male ......

But often I don't want to send a message body - i just want to send an 
attached file.    male -a myfile spike@mweb.com

The problem is that it just hangs waiting for something on STDIN.

I capture the STDIN with

while (<STDIN>)
{
         $body .= $_;
}

In have also tried

@body = <STDIN>;

and

if(<STDIN>)

but as soon as we get a <STDIN> it waits for one!

Anyone have an idea on how I can get the script to realize when there will 
be no STDIN - (other than another switch on the Command line)?
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From jason at dart.co.za  Wed Dec 29 17:57:27 2004
From: jason at dart.co.za (Jason Armstrong)
Date: Wed Dec 29 17:57:33 2004
Subject: Fwd: Re: [Za-pm] no STDIN
Message-ID: <20041229235727.GC17509@riverdrums.com>

[ Spike: Dec 22 14:45 ]

> male -a myfile spike@mweb.com
> 
> The problem is that it just hangs waiting for something on STDIN.

> Anyone have an idea on how I can get the script to realize when there
> will be no STDIN - (other than another switch on the Command line)?

Unfortunately, if you need to read anything from STDIN, then your script
is going to wait until it reads something.

You could just press ^D after the command to get the script to stop
reading.

Or you could reverse the order of command line switches ie provide a
switch that will tell you 'read from stdin':

$ male -a myfile -s spike@mweb.com

The -s could indicate that you wanted to add text to your message.

Then you could do something like:

if ($readstdin) {
  while (<STDIN>) {
    .
    .
  }
}

Or you could have another switch eg '-a myfile' could mean 'attach my
file and read from stdin', whereas '-i myfile' could mean 'attach my
file and send immediately'.

Another way would be to implement a timeout on stdin, using select().
For example:

my $in = '';
vec($in, fileno(STDIN), 1) = 1;
if (select($in, undef, undef, 2)) {
  while (<STDIN>) {
    ....
  }
}

Would wait for 2 seconds for input on stdin, and then timeout. Look at
the documentation for select (perldoc -f select) for more information.

--
Jason Armstrong