Sending Emails from Command Line

Introduction

There can be great utility in sending emails from the command line. Everyone has their own use case, and I'll explain how it works.

Mail is one of the most commonly used commands for sending emails:

echo "My text body" | mail -s "My Subject" "xxx@mycompany.com" "mail@mail2.com" "mail@mail3.com"

I think this is clear enough. You can do whatever you want before the "pipe" and then send everything.

If you want to send an attachment, do this:

echo "see attached file" | mail -a filename -s "subject" email@address

or

cat filename | uuencode filename | mail -s "Email subject" user@example.com

Mutt is not specifically dedicated to sending emails, but the advantage is being able to attach files. Here's another small example:

echo "My text body" | mutt -x -a my_attachment -s "My Subject" "xxx@mycompany.com" "mail@mail2.com" "mail@mail3.com"