emailing from Perl on a Windows box

More CGI Programs and Facilities example from a Well House Consultants training course
More on More CGI Programs and Facilities [link]

This example is described in the following article(s):
• Writing with our customers words - [link]

Source code: winmailer.pl Module: P406

use Mail::Sendmail; # Loaded via ppm from Active State

%mail = (To => 'graham@sheepbingo.co.uk',
        From => 'The Windows test box <graham@wellho.net>',
        Message => "Please put head round door to confirm receipt\n",
        Subject => "Pie in the fridge",
        Reply-to => 'graham@wellho.net',
        # cc => 'leah@wellho.net',
        # bcc => 'graham@wellho.net',
        smtp => 'lightning.he.net');

$aok = sendmail(%mail);
print ("status $aok\n");

print "issa gonna ... \n";

__END__

On a Linux or Unix box, you're likely to have a local sendmail
running and so you can talk directly to that from Perl. On a
Windows system, it's slightly different in that you'll probably
NOT have local sendmail. So to email from Perl on a Windows
platform, you should load a module such as Mail::Sendmail and
use it to send you email, as in this example.

Two things to note:

a) You'll need to specify your mailing host via the smtp member
of the hash so that your program knows where to send the email
(alternatives are available if you want to use a centralised config).
There may be an issue as to whether your smtp host will accept your
connection; because of the prevelance of spam, there will almost
undoubtedly be some additional autorisation involved.

b) Ensure that your email has a good range of headers - things like
your from address containing a real name as well as an email address.
Than avoids your mail looking too much like spam. And ensure that
you set a reply-to up as well. That way, anyone who replies to the
email will be writing to a real user and not to a web server.

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