Multiple Sends with PHP mail()

[John_McKean]

I send a customized weekly reminder to about 1600 club members with a PHP script.
The server is up-to-date Linux/Apache. I have had the problem with two hosts; LunarPages and HostPapa.

<?
mail($address,$subj,$body,$from);
echo $log;
sleep(9);
?>

Every 20 to 40 weeks, the mail server starts sending two copies to each recipient at some random point during the batch. The double send continues for the remainder of the batch. If I restart the batch, it runs normally.

Any advice is welcome.

[dagon]

1. don't use mail in a loop its terribly inefficient, even the mail() manual page says so.
2. show he actual script your using.

[Weedpacket]

Actually, what the manual says about [man]mail[/man] is:

It is worth noting that the mail() function is not suitable for larger volumes of email in a loop. This function opens and closes an SMTP socket for each email, which is not very efficient.

For the sending of large amounts of email, see the PEAR::Mail, and PEAR::Mail_Queue packages.

[John_McKean]

Thanks folks!

I will give PEAR a try.