"When the need arises to send email from the command line, many folks first think of the mail(1) command. A better choice might be the email program, which gives you the ability to send email to an SMTP server over SSL, offers MIME support including ability to attach one or more files to your emails, uses an address book to store your recipients, and lets you digitally sign and encrypt your messages.
"While there are tools to allow you to send complex email messages from Perl or PHP, being able to send email directly from the command line is handy for cron jobs and other applications where you just want to quickly send a message with an attachment..."
