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Python, Unix sendmail, and multiple recipients

Matthew Dixon Cowles matt at mondoinfo.com
Tue Oct 16 13:38:38 EDT 2001 
On Tue, 16 Oct 2001 10:58:49 -0500, Kemp Randy-W18971
<Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote:

>Can anyone give me an example of how to invoke the Unix sendmail in
>Python, and send an email message to more then one recipient (two
>people, for example)?

Dear Randy,
If it's practical, I'd use Python's smtplib. It's documented at:

http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-smtplib.html

Since it uses a socket connection, it doesn't require that the MTA be
sendmail and the MTA doesn't have to be on the local machine.

If you really want to use a local copy of sendmail, you could open a
pipe to it and invoke it with the -t option so that it will read
the recipients from the message. Something like (untested):

p=os.popen("/usr/lib/sendmail -t","w")
p.write(msg)
p.close()

Your sendmail may well not be in /usr/lib. If you need to specify
the recipients outside of the message text, they can be put on
the command line (again untested):

p=os.popen("/usr/lib/sendmail a at example.org b at example.org","w")
p.write(msg)
p.close()

Regards,
Matt
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