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bashattachmentmailx

Mailing multiple files unregarding file existence

I am sending multiple files in a single mail to myself:

file1="/somedir/file1.md"
file2="/somedir/file2.md"
file3="/somedir/file3.md"
file4="/somedir/file4.md"
echo "Body text" | mailx -s "The Files" -a "${file1}" -a "${file2}" -a "${file3}" -a "${file4}" [email protected]

These files are not always there, so if any of these attachments does not exist the mail will not be send. However I want to send the mail anyway with the attachments that are there. I could build an if statement with multiple other if statements nested inside of it, but that seems a bit devious. What is a better way?

Solution

  • You can build -a options dynamically by filtering out non-existent files:

    files_arg=
for file in /somedir/file1.md /somedir/file2.md /somedir/file3.md /somedir/file4.md ~/.bashrc; do
    [[ -f $file ]] && files_arg="$files_arg -a $file"
done
echo $files_arg

    Outputs:

    -a /home/max/.bashrc