Sending mail using mailx

Question

I'm trying to send mail using Mailx and uuencode with attachments using the following in a shellscript

attachments=uuencode file1 file1;uuencode file2 file2;

(echo BODY ; $attachments )| mailx -s "Attachments" -m someone@mail.com

For the above script only mail without attachment is sent,However when i use the following

(echo BODY ; uuencode file1 file1;uuencode file2 file2;)| mailx -s "Attachments" -m someone@mail.com

Now mail is sent with the attachments.

I'm fairly new shellscripting kindly help.

Answer 1

You are using the wrong quotes for command substitution:

attachments=`uuencode file1 file1;uuencode file2 file2`

or better

attachments=$( uuencode file1 file1;uuencode file2 file2 )

See the Command Substitution section of the bash man page

And then use echo to output the variable content

(echo BODY ; echo $attachments )| mailx -s "Attachments" -m someone@example.com