Can't get an email message to format properly... Linefeeds not working?

[NeilF]

I've got a simple routine to fire out emails. I noticed with some calls the mails appeared as expected, but with others the linefeeds were not working. Instead of appearing on a new line there'd just be a space and then the text.

When this happens in Outlook you can enable/disable "Wrap" and the message will appear correctly/incorrectly.

There's something here I don't understand, and hope someone can point out what's going wrong.

The following example sends out two emails, one with double linefeeds and one with single linefeeds. The one with double linefeeds behaves as expected. The one with single line feeds does not!

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Choice method of sending, sendmail or SMTP
$mail_prog='smtp:mail.MYWEBSITE.com';
#$mail_prog="/usr/sbin/sendmail";

$addr_to="neil\@MYEMAIL.com";
$addr_from="hi\@MYEMAIL.com";

$|=1;
print "Content-type:text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1\n\n<pre>";
print "Mail Test program...\n";

# Get a blank line between each line (as expected)
$rest_of_msg="Subject:This is a subject\n\n";
$rest_of_msg.="A reply has been posted to your message on the website 
+blah blah blah.\n\n";
$rest_of_msg.="The URL for the response is\n\n";
$rest_of_msg.="http://www.awebsite.com/cgi/software/program.pl?f=1&m=2
+54388&df=1\n\n";
&send_an_email($addr_to,$addr_from,$rest_of_msg);

# Doesn't do any line feeds!
$rest_of_msg="Subject:This is a subject\n\n";
$rest_of_msg.="A reply has been posted to your message on the website 
+blah blah blah.\n";
$rest_of_msg.="The URL for the response is\n";
$rest_of_msg.="http://www.awebsite.com/cgi/software/program.pl?f=1&m=2
+54388&df=1\n";
&send_an_email($addr_to,$addr_from,$rest_of_msg);

print "Sent!";
exit;

sub send_an_email{
    my($to,$from,$rest)=@_;

    if(substr($mail_prog,0,5) eq 'smtp:'){
        require Net::SMTP;
        my $smtp=substr($mail_prog,5);
        $smtp = Net::SMTP->new($smtp); 
        $smtp->mail($from); 
        $smtp->to($to); 
        $smtp->data(); 
        $smtp->datasend("To:$to\nFrom:$from\n$rest");
        $smtp->dataend(); 
        $smtp->quit();
    }else{
        open MAIL,"|$mail_prog -t";
        print MAIL "To:$to\nFrom:$from\n$rest";
        close MAIL;
    }
}

The two emails I get appear line this:-

A reply has been posted to your message on the website blah blah blah.

The URL for the response is

http://www.awebsite.com/cgi/software/program.pl?f=1&m=254388&df=1

A reply has been posted to your message on the website blah blah blah. The URL for the response is http://www.awebsite.com/cgi/software/program.pl?f=1&m=254388&df=1

Like I say some emails I send appear absolutely fine so I'm not sure if length of lines play some part in it working? But something very odd is going on!?

[clinton]

It probably has something to do with the fact that line terminators in SMTP (see RFC) are supposed to be \r\n, so the client is managing to interpret \n\n to represent what you meant to express, but it is working in 'quirks mode'.

hth clint

[NeilF]

OK cheers! I'll try that... I did try SENDMAIL as well...

[NeilF]

DID NOT WORK! \r\n still does not force a new line...

It appears like this in outlook:-

A reply has been posted to your message on the website blah blah blah. The URL for the response is
http://www.awebsite.com/cgi/software/program.pl?f=1&m=254388&df=1

Note: The URL is on a new line but may just have autowrapped.

[NeilF]

It's actually a problem/issue with Outlook 2003!!!!

http://www.masternewmedia.org/newsletter_publishing/newsletter_formatting/remove_line_breaks_issue_Microsoft_Outlook_2003_when_publishing_text_newsletters_20051217.htm