problem using mail()

[pythone]

Hello

I am starting to learn PHP and run it on my Windows computer with Apache Web server locally.

I was trying to learn how to use the mail() function and tried to send myself an email to my yahoo account but the mail function fails everytime.

here is my code:

<?php
  $success = mail("<myaccount>@yahoo.com", "subject", "message");
  if ($success ) {
    echo "mail was sent succesfully\n";
  }
  else {
    echo "error in sending the mail\n";
  }
?>

myaccount is obviously my yahoo account
what could be the problem?

[yelvington]

This is probably a configuration problem.

Windows machines don't come with mail servers built in, so on Windows, PHP requires that you specifically name an SMTP server in your PHP.INI file.

[pythone]

thanks for the quick reply

can you tell me of a free mail server that I can use for my windows machine for testing?

and how to configure the php.ini file to use it?

thanks

[yelvington]

You have an Internet connection? Read this:

http://us2.php.net/mail

Then put the name of your ISP's SMTP server in the appropriate place in PHP.INI, and restart Apache.

(Look for a line that begins SMTP= and make sure it is not commented out.)