How can I script the body of a VMS mail?

Question

I have a script that addresses and sends an email but I need a body in the message without creating a file and then inserting the file with the standard MAIL commandline.

How can I do that?

Answer 1

Have the script create a temporary file to hold the body of the message.

Mail will accept a text file on the command line, like the list of users and the /subj

Answer 2

Assuming the body you want to create is something you can write to SYS$OUTPUT (e.g. the output of a command procedure or DCL command), then you can use DCL PIPE to pipe the output into VMS Mail, like:

$ PIPE write sys$output "The date is ", f$cvtime() | MAIL SYS$INPUT smith/SUBJ="Piping in DCL"

or

$ PIPE DIR *.LOG | MAIL SYS$INPUT smith/SUBJ="Piping in DCL"

The PIPE command was added in OpenVMS V7.1. If you are somehow on an pre-7.1 system, then your only choice is writing to a temporary file and cleaning up.

Edit: To answer the comment, if you want to eliminate the interactive displays from the Mail command, you can redirect SYS$OUTPUT to NLA0:, as in:

$ PIPE DIR *.LOG |  MAIL SYS$INPUT smith/SUBJ="Piping in DCL" > NLA0:

Error messages go to SYS$ERROR, so you'll still see any failures. See HELP PIPE for more goodness.