Generally, I would use MIME::Tools to build the message, then send it via /usr/bin/sendmail. The critical part is the formatting, and then the actual hand off is to an external Mail Agent. Here is some example code which assumes Linux-like environment. This script could be called sendemail and the command line arguments can be deduced from the line with the @ARGV. The attachments are files, and are optional. A more complete script would include documentation, of course. Note that this sends email to whatever SMTP host your system is configured to send mail to; it does not send just through gmail, but can send anywhere, including to addresses @gmail.com

#!/usr/bin/perl
# SSF 071710 send email example for Perlmonks 

use strict;
use warnings;
use vars qw/$cmdMail/;
use LWP::MediaTypes qw(guess_media_type read_media_types);
use MIME::Entity;

BEGIN {
   $cmdMail='/usr/lib/sendmail';   # location of your sendmail
   read_media_types('/etc/mime.types');  # location of your mime.types
+ file
}

sub sendmail {   # returns undef or error
   my ($from,$to,$subject,$body,@attachments)=@_;
   my $ret;
   my $top=build MIME::Entity
         From         => $from,
         'Reply-to'   => $from,
         To           => $to,
         Subject      => $subject,
         Data         => $body;
   if (@attachments) {
      for my $path (@attachments) {
          my $type=guess_media_type($path);
          $top->attach(
              Path     => $path,
              Type     => $type,
              Encoding => '-SUGGEST'
          );
       }
    }
    $top->sync_headers(Length=>'COMPUTE') if @attachments;
    if (open(MAIL,"| $cmdMail -t -i")) {
       $top->print(\*MAIL);
       close MAIL;
    } else {
       $ret="Mail to $to failed: $!";
    }
    $ret;
}

my ($from,$to,$subject,$body,@attachments)=@ARGV;

my $err=sendmail($from,$to,$subject,$body,@attachments);
die $err if $err;
exit;
[download]

The code creates the properly formatted message, and knows how to add each attachment with its proper formatting and media type (which it figures out with a little help from LWP::MediaTypes, and then it has to sync the headers to compute the length of the message. MIME::Entity does the internal work of generating a proper separating line for the different parts of a multi-part message, and does it only when you call the attach method.

HTH,
SSF

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