mail bash variable on a new line

Question

echo $d produces output below which is separated by new line after each ';'

REVOKE ALL ON URI 'hdfs://nameservice/data/ed_bos_reporting_stg' FROM ROLE ed_bos_reporting; 
REVOKE ALL ON URI 'hdfs://nameservice/data/fq' FROM ROLE ed_edw_telephony_rw; 
REVOKE ALL ON URI 'hdfs://nameservice/data/fq' FROM ROLE edw_rw; 
REVOKE ALL ON URI 'hdfs://nameservice/data/standard_register_mail_piece' FROM ROLE standard_register_mail_piece_rw; 
REVOKE ALL ON URI 'hdfs://nameservice/data/tenant/ed_edw/LSFE_CDC/target_files' FROM ROLE edw_rw; 
REVOKE ALL ON URI 'hdfs://nameservice/data/tenant/ed_standard_register_mail_piece_stg' FROM ROLE ed_standard_register_mail_piece_rw;

When I pipe $d in the mail command -

echo "$d" | mail -s "subject" -r "Name<Name@somewhere.com >" first.last@somewhere.com

The results are not separated by a new line.

I have tried:

echo -e "$d\n" | mail -s "subject" -r "Name<Name@somewhere.com >"
echo -e "$d" $'\n' | mail -s "subject" -r "Name<Name@somewhere.com >"

And few others with no luck. Any suggestions/leads to documentation would be appreciated.

UPDATE This does work fine in gmail. However not in Outlook

Working fine for me, though Outlook squishes out the newlines and I have to tell it to leave my mail alone after I receive it. . . any chance that's your issue? — Paul Hodges, Jun 19 '18 at 20:09

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 20 '18 at 18:05

1

It seems that Outlook removed extra line breaks from my message. I was able to use awk to fix the problem.

echo "$d" | awk '{ print $0"   " }' | mail -s "subject" -r "Name<Name@somewhere.com >" first.last@somewhere.com

This reads every single line, and re-prints it with three spaces at the end. Outlook is now happy. https://blog.dhampir.no/content/outlook-removes-extra-line-breaks-from-plain-text-emails-how-to-stop-it

answered Jun 20 '18 at 18:05

TheNewGuy

559
1
10
27

Happy to hear that you solved the problem. You can accept your own answer to mark your questions as solved. By the way: `echo "$d" | ...` can be written as `... <<< $d`. You could even replace `awk` with bash's parameter substitution: `mail ... <<< "${x/$'\n'/...$'\n'}"` (replace the `...` with three spaces. Stackoverflow merges multiple spaces in inline code). – Socowi Jun 20 '18 at 19:03

Socowi · Answer 2 · 2018-06-20T12:43:53.353

0

I don't have outlook and cannot test my assumptions, but maybe outlook requires the text to use \r\n line endings instead of just \n line endings.

Try

sed $'s/$/\r/' <<< "$d" | mail ...

or install dos2unix and use

unix2dos <<< "$d" | mail ...

to convert the linux \n line endings into windows \r\n line endings.

edited Jun 20 '18 at 12:43

answered Jun 20 '18 at 12:36

Socowi

25,550
3
32
54

This results in the report being sent as binary attachment. – TheNewGuy Jun 20 '18 at 18:06
1

@user3508766 Too bad. Anyway, I found some [other answers](https://stackoverflow.com/a/22098987/6770384) that might help you. They include using only `\r` (try `tr '\n' '\r' <<< "$d" | mail ...`) or writing two spaces in front of each new line and using `mailx`. – Socowi Jun 20 '18 at 18:52

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 19 '18 at 18:54

-1

if you have output that you'd like separated by newlines on a certain character, tr is pretty good about that:

echo "$d" | \
mail -s "subject" -r "Name<Name@somewhere.com >" first.last@somewhere.com | \
tr ';' $'\n'

This will remove the semicolons. I am sure there's a way to do it without removing them but this is the only way I know off the top of my head; HTH

answered Jun 19 '18 at 18:54

jeremysprofile

10,028
4
33
53

1

would appreciate explanation of downvotes so that I can improve. – jeremysprofile Jun 19 '18 at 19:51
Only a guess: `$d` already contains newlines. OP's `mail` seems to neglect them, so you answer is not a solution to the problem. – Socowi Jun 19 '18 at 20:18
ah. I thought OP meant that the final result after `mail` didn't have newlines. thanks. – jeremysprofile Jun 19 '18 at 20:20

mail bash variable on a new line

3 Answers3