How to insert new line in the email using linux mail command?

Question

how to insert new line in the email using linux mail command?

echo "Hi xxx, would you tell me something?\\n thanks!\\n -xxx" | mail -s "subject" xxx@gmail.com

The email shows the literal '\n', not a newline, how do fix it?

SMTP uses CRLF line endings, not CR alone and not LF alone. In fact, the RFC specifically says you MUST NOT send a lone CR or lone LF. Also, messages should end in two CRLF, not one. Also see [RFC 5321](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321), Section 2.3.8, *Lines*. — jww, Dec 12 '19 at 10:37
@jww As already discussed elsewhere, `mail` or `mailx` takes care of this for you. You don't need to know or care what SMTP requires in this particular case. — tripleee, Dec 12 '19 at 16:33

score 45 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 27 '12 at 05:23

45

Try using echo -e

echo -e "Hello \n World"

You can type man echo from the command line to read more.

answered Sep 27 '12 at 05:23

jahroy

`echo -e` is brittle and poorly portable. You should prefer `printf` instead; it also simplifies this particular use case because you can conveniently split the lines to separate string arguments. – tripleee Dec 12 '19 at 16:36
1

I've never expected that I'll search for echo's options, but here we are. even echo has options (because of course it does :D) – Miro Rodozov Oct 23 '20 at 15:43

score 18 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 27 '19 at 18:39

18

With mailx, if you send the email to an Outlook user, you can add 2 spaces at the beginning of each line.

{ echo "Hi xxx, would you tell me something" ; echo "thanks!" ; echo "-xxx" } | sed 's/^/  /g' | mailx -s "subject" xxx@domain.com

edited Nov 27 '19 at 18:39

CarenRose

answered Feb 28 '14 at 15:18

Eric

2

Yes Outlook is a pain but this is real life. It worked just fine for me. – Michael Dussere Mar 25 '15 at 14:28

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 14 '16 at 17:22

5

The accepted answer did not work for me when using the mail command, I had to use

\r

My whole command is

mail -s "SUBJECT" -aFrom:"from@sdf.com "to@sdfd.com" <<< $( echo -e "Line1\rLine2")

answered Nov 14 '16 at 17:22

Lenka Pitonakova

2

using \r made the entire email body look like an attachment to Gmail when i tried it. – edwardsmarkf Feb 01 '21 at 20:14

score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 12 '19 at 16:24

5

Tested on MacOS with Bash 3.2

bash-3.2$ mail -s "$subject" TestEmail@gmail.com <<< $(printf "%s\r\n%s\n" "This is Line One"  "This is Line Two")

This is a screen shot from gmail of the email received

answered Dec 12 '19 at 16:24

David Walton

1

While this works, the here string is superfluous if you are using a separate process to produce the string anyway. `printf '%s\n' 'This is line one' 'This is line two' | mail -s "$subject"` – tripleee Dec 12 '19 at 16:32
For a way to fix this specifically for Outlook users on the receiving end, see https://serverfault.com/a/1083188/34013 . – Richlv Nov 10 '21 at 20:35
This is the only working solution for me! It was a very pain to make this working! – Zac Mar 27 '23 at 15:11

dstandish · Answer 5 · 2017-09-29T22:52:14.167

I encountered this issue and resolved it by surrounding with quotes the variable I was piping into mailx.

I started with a list of processes from ps i.e. list="$(ps |grep some_process)".

Then when I tried to mail that out as follows, the newlines were obliterated:

echo $body | mailx -s "${subject}" recipient@someplace.com

But, simply wrapping $body with quotes preserved the newlines:

echo "$body" | mailx -s "${subject}" recipient@someplace.com

5 Answers5