[Mailman-Users] Member list... (drifting off topic)

[Mark Sapiro]

Anne Ramey wrote:
>>   
>You might try
>/path/to/mailman/bin/list_members listname &> /path/to/mail -s 'List 
>Names' box at address.com


This is shell dependent. &> doesn't work in all shells, but if it does,
the effect of the above would be to write both stdout and stderr from
the command

/path/to/mailman/bin/list_members listname -s 'List Names'
box at address.com

to the file  /path/to/mail (with luck, this would fail for lack of
permission)

>You may need to specify the path to the mail depending on what you have 
>PATH= set to for your crontab.


The OP reported he received mail, so I don't think the path is the
issue.


>Also, I've never tried to | in cron.  
>I'm sure it's possible, but &> redirects the output of a cron command to 
>wherever you've specified.


cron passes the command line to the selected shell. If the shell
recognizes | as a pipe it works.

In bash for example &> redirects both stdout and stderr to a file (not
to the stdin of a command), but in tcsh for example only >& does this,
and &> doesn't work at all.

To use &> in a cron command line, you'd need something like

/path/to/mailman/bin/list_members listname &> /tmp/xxx ; mail -s 'List
Names' box at address.com < /tmp/xxx ; rm /tmp/xxx

for the command part.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan