sendEmail

sendEmail is a lightweight, command‑line utility used to send electronic mail from a Unix or Linux system. It was originally developed by R. `rsz` at the University of Toronto and is designed to be simple, flexible and scriptable. The core program accepts message text from standard input or a file and delivers it via the local Mail Transfer Agent (MTA), such as sendmail, postfix or exim. The utility can be invoked from shell scripts, cron jobs, or other command‑line programs to automate notifications, alerts or status reports.

Typical usage is:

sendEmail -f [email protected] -t [email protected] -u "Subject line" -m "Message body"

Options describe the sender (-f), recipient list (-t), subject line (-u), and message body (-m). Additional flags allow specifying attachments (-a), SMTP server details, authentication credentials, SSL/TLS usage, and more. The message body can be passed through a file with the '-i' option or via a pipe.

The program also supports multi‑recipient lists and reply‑to addresses, and can handle headers in RFC 5322 format. For advanced usage, environment variables such as EMAILHOST, EMAILPORT, and SECURE can be set to override command‑line options.

sendEmail is distributed under the BSD license and is often pre‑installed on many Linux distributions, though it may need manual installation on systems that rely on alternative mail utilities. It provides a convenient, script‑friendly interface for sending email without the complexities of building raw MIME messages manually. The tool is well‑documented; the man page and the official website provide reference for all available flags and examples.

By enabling simple email transmission, sendEmail is widely employed in system administration, monitoring solutions, and automated reporting workflows, allowing users to trigger alerts and updates with minimal configuration.