Version 1 of attachment

Updated 2002-02-20 14:19:59

E-mail attachments constitute a surprisingly large and even unwieldy subject. The first clarification is to distinguish emission of e-mail with attachments, from its reception and interpretation. The Wiki page on the mime package focuses mostly on the latter.

The variety of ways to transmit e-mail attachments with Tcl is large. CL keeps a few models in [L1 ].

One of the reasons for active interest in the range of possibilities is typical for Tcl: one wants to compensate for various constraints. mime had severe flaws before tcllib 0.8 (and still has other errors--more on that, later) and is essentially unreliable with Tcl before 8.2. CL frequently needs to set up quick e-mail operations on hosts equipped with old interpreters; 7.6, for example, in the case of a client met in January 2002. For older interpreters, it's best to enlist outside help, as with

    set tmpfile /tmp/abc[pid]
    set subject "This is the subject line."

    exec /usr/local/bin/mpack -s $subject -o $tmpfile $standard_name
    set To {The distribution list}
    set recipients "[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]"
    set recipients [join $recipients ,]
    exec $sendmail -t << \
    "To: ($To)
    Bcc: $recipients
    [exec cat $tmpfile]"