A Mail Function Question.

This may sound sorta like an ignorant question. I am curious if anyone can tell me "how" php goes about sending mail, when the mail(), or imap_mail() functions are called? I ask this question, because I make this minor assumption, (and we all know what happens when we assume) that by defining the "smtp" or "sendmail" path's in our ini file(s) that we are directing those functions to "send" our email via the server or path described. To further that, I would think php to work much in the way other email client software does, like Eudora or Outlook. In those we define the smtp, or whatever server and it does the rest. I come to this conclusion because the "functions" themselves provide you no method of sending mail via an alternate server, etc. What I mean by this, is if a user could define through a variable, let's call it $SMTPServer, then PHP could in theory send the message to that server for transmission. ------------------- Okay, now your wondering why I'm going here to begin with. It's simple. I'm working on a mail client to run via my local "Intranet", for a lack of better things to call it. Naturally I have the cheapest solution for a web server I could find, that wasn't PWS, and I've started to work... I've defined my regular domain as my SMTP server in PHP's ini. Which in theory would transmit my email message out to that server (like all my other mail does) and then on it's merry ole' way. But, this apparently doesn't work that way. As when I get to the portion of my developed client and tell it to send.. it reaches out to the web, and diddles for a while then returns a nice big error message, saying Server Error blah blah on line blah blah... --- Then there's the situation with another person who posted (today, I think) that their host has the sendmail path wrong in their ini file, and refused to change it. This leads to me close this little note, by asking the developers of PHP to consider adding the string SMTP to the mail, or imap_mail functions in a future release... much in the way a user writing Perl would define the path to sendmail in their script. ------------- Lastly, I would like to know if there are any "freeware" mail server software packages about??? This would alleviate my little problem, at least from the local aspect of things, and allow me to quickly continue to develop my mail client tool. Thanks a bunch for lending an ear.. for those that actually read this, I look forward to any suggestions, or comments that you might have. Kind Regards Robert J Sherman 827 W 13th St Joplin, MO 64804 417.626.7759 ph 877.626.9876 toll free (US and Canada) webmaster@snr-graphics.com "Be not so quick to judge. Not everything is, understanding. Not all at once, is it revealed..."

        Yoda -- Episode I: The Phantom Menace 1999

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