Why can't I pipe the output of uuencode to mailx in a single Perl open statement?

Here's my code that is not working:

print "To: ";  my $to=<>;  chomp $to;
print "From: ";  my $from=<>;  chomp $from;
print "Attach: "; my $attach=<>; chomp $attach;
print "Subject: "; my $subject=<>; chomp $subject;
print "Message: "; my $message=<>; chomp $message;

my $mail_fh = \*MAIL;
open $mail_fh, "uuencode $attach $attach |mailx -m -s \"$subject\" -r $from $to";
print $mail_fh $message;
close($mail_fh);

The mailx command works fine off the command line, but not in thi开发者_如何学JAVAs Perl script context.

Any idea what I'm missing?

open $mail_fh, "uuencode $attach $attach |mailx -m -s \"$subject\" -r $from $to";

is the culprit.

You just need an extra | at the beginning:

open $mail_fh, "|uuencode $attach $attach |mailx -m -s \"$subject\" -r $from $to"; 

Do you really want to use external binaries for either the uuencode or the mailx bit? UUencode is almost trivial with pack.

There are other ways to send mail. See the How do I send mail? in perlfaq9.