mail function and "-" character problem in "To " value

suzann

I'm new to PHP and to mailing lists.

It appears that when I use the PHP mail function, and I specify a "To" value like: newsletter-subscribe@domain.com, the subscription to the list fails.

If I have a "To" value like: somebody@domain.com, the mail function sends the mail accurately, and with correct "From: " information.

Help!

Frederick

If you are trying to place newsletter in the persons From: area of their email browser, there is another way of doing this

mail("Newsletter <somebody@domain.com>","subject","message","From: Site Title <somebody@domain.com>");

suzann

Hi and thanks, but I'm not certain I understand your reply. I think I need to be more specific about the problem, so here goes...

My webhost provides access to EZMLM, a mailing list application. It appears people can subscribe to a list by sending an empty e-mail to a receiving e-mail ID like: maillist-subscribe@domain.com, and to unsubscribe, the person can send e-mail to an ID like: maillist-unsubscribe@domain.com.

When mail is received by one of these 2 different addresses, the value of the From: parameter in the e-mail is utilized to either subscribe or unsubscribe the e-mail ID from the mailing list --- at least this is my understanding :-)

From Outlook Express, I am successful at e-mailing to either the "-subscribe", or "-unsubscribe" ID's. All seems to work OK.

The problem occurs when I use the PHP mail function. Following is the code I am using. When I run this, it places what I believe is the mail address of the Server in the mailing list, a value like: httpd@web11.opentransfer.com.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
</head>

<body>
<h1>mail test</h1>
<?php
$toaddress = 'newsletter-subscribe@sacramentohealthymarriage.org';

$fromaddress = 'From: lizzyb@pacbell.net';
$content = 'something';
$subject = 'test sending';

if (mail($toaddress, $subject, $content, $fromaddress)) print "<br /> true";
?>
</body>
</html>

I am really stumped. I have virtually no experience with PHP or Mailing lists. I am supposed to have this functional for a friend I am doing a website for. HELP :-)