Daemon to play sound alert when you have new E-Mail

gotmail.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# gotmail.pl -By Ryan Kulla
# I wrote this in the '90s to help learn perl
# Notifies you audibly when you have new mail.
# Created for fun. Rename to gotmaild, add to startup scripts, to make real daemon.

use POSIX;

$MAILBOX = "/path/to/mbox"; # change this to your actual mailbox
$PLAY_SOUND = "mplayer /path/to/alert.mp3"; # change to preferred player and sound file
$DELAY_IN_SECONDS = 10; # Check for new mail every 10 seconds

sub start_daemon {
    my $pid = fork;
    exit if $pid;
    die "Couldn't fork: $!" unless defined($pid);

    POSIX::setsid() or die "Can't start a new session: $!";

    sub signal_handler {
        $time_to_die = 1;
    }
    $SIG{INT} = $SIG{TERM} = $SIG{HUP} = \&signal_handler;
}

# Currently only works with mbox style mail. If you use maildir style just tweak this
# function to get a running count of the files in your maildir directory.
sub check_for_new_mail {
    my $mail_count = 0;
    open(my $fh, "<", "$MAILBOX") or die "Can't open $MAILBOX: $!";
    while (<$fh>) {
        $mail_count++;
    }
    close($fh);
    return $mail_count;
}

sub main_loop {
    my $last_value = 0;
    my $mail_count = 0;

    until ($time_to_die) {
        for ($mail_count = check_for_new_mail()) {
            sleep($DELAY_IN_SECONDS);
        }
        if ($mail_count > $last_value) {
            `$PLAY_SOUND`;
        }
        $last_value = $mail_count;
    }
}

start_daemon();
main_loop();