Question

I need to write a perl script for sending emails.
The script should read .txt document containing the e-mail addresses as its first argument (there could be more than one address, and they are all separated with “;”) and an .html document that should be the body of the e-mail as its second.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use Net::SMTP::SSL;

sub send_mail {

    my $to = $ARGV[0];
    open(MYFILE, $to) || die("Could not open file!");
    @recepients=<MYFILE>;
    close(MYFILE);

    my $body = $ARGV[1];
    open (TXTFILE, $body);
    @lines = <TXTFILE>;
    close(TXTFILE);
    $body = join("",@lines);

    my $from = '[e-mail]';
    my $password = 'thePassword';

    my $smtp;

    if (not $smtp = Net::SMTP::SSL->new('smtp.gmail.com',
                            Port => 465,
                            Debug => 1)) {
        die "Could not connect to server\n";
    }

    $smtp->auth($from, $password) || die "Authentication failed!\n";

    $smtp->mail($from . "\n");

    my @recepients = split(/;/, $to);
    foreach my $recp (@recepients) {
        $smtp->to($recp . "\n");
    }
    $smtp->data();
    $smtp->datasend("From: " . $from . "\n");
    $smtp->datasend("To: " . $to . "\n");
    $smtp->datasend("Subject: " . $subject . "\n");
    $smtp->datasend("\n");
    $smtp->datasend($body . "\n");
    $smtp->dataend();
    $smtp->quit;
}

&send_mail()

So I tried to work something out, but I have a problem with extracting the information both from the .txt and .html documents. So the error should be somewhere at the splitting of the recipients.

Answer 1

There were several issues in your script. I would suggest you to use Perl::Critic as it analyzes your code and usually gives helpful hints.

The following works:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

Always use strict and warnings

use strict;
use warnings;

use Net::SMTP::SSL;

English will give a textual representation of error messages

use English qw(-no_match_vars);

Carp issues warnings and error from the perspective of the caller

use Carp;

our $VERSION = '1.0.0';

sub send_mail {

    my ( $to, $body ) = @_;

it is better to have filehandles as variables too

    my $to_handle;
    my $text_handle;

Always declare variables

    my @recipients;
    my @lines;

Always check the return value of system calls (open, close, …)

    # print the error message in case of errors
    open $to_handle, '<', $to
      or croak "Error opening $to: $OS_ERROR";
    @recipients = <$to_handle>;
    close $to_handle
      or croak "Error closing $to: $OS_ERROR";

    open $text_handle, '<', $body
      or croak "Error opening $body: $OS_ERROR";
    @lines = <$text_handle>;
    close $text_handle
      or croak "Error closing $body: $OS_ERROR";

    $body = join '', @lines;

    my $from     = '[e-mail]';

I would avoid putting a password in the script source

    my $password = '*****';

    my $smtp;

Don’t put a new line at the end of die/warn/… as it will remove the line number where the error occurred

    $smtp = Net::SMTP::SSL->new(
        'smtp.gmail.com',
        Port  => 465,
        Debug => 1
    ) or croak 'Could not connect to server';

    $smtp->auth( $from, $password )
      or croak 'Authentication failed!';

    $smtp->mail( $from . "\n" );

    # removed trailing \n
    chomp $recipients[0];

The ; separated list is in the first line (the first element of your array): you have to split the first line.

    foreach my $recp ( split /;/mxs, $recipients[0] ) {
        $smtp->to( $recp . "\n" );
    }

    $smtp->data();
    $smtp->datasend( "From: $from\n" );
    $smtp->datasend( "To: $to\n" );

$subject was not defined, you would have detected it with strict and warnings

    $smtp->datasend("Subject: Test\n");
    $smtp->datasend("\n");
    $smtp->datasend("$body\n" );
    $smtp->dataend();
    $smtp->quit;

It is a good practice to end subroutines with a return as perl uses the result of the last evaluation as a result if return is not specified.

    return;

}

Evaluate ARGV in the main body. You will loose clarity if you scatter the processing in one or several subroutines

if ( !$ARGV[0] || !$ARGV[1] ) {
    print STDERR "usage: send to content\n";
    exit 1;
}

There was a missing semicolon. You don’t need to use & to call subroutines

send_mail( $ARGV[0], $ARGV1 );

1;