README -- readme file for bday-notice.pl

NOTE : the script was hacked in a few hours on a single day and comes with no warranty of any kind.
       don't use it if you don't know what you're doing.
       
       you may use it, copy it, change it, do with it whatever you like as long as you don't blame me if something
       goes terribly wrong.

intended setup  
===============

- copy the script and the csv file that contains the address book entries to your unix server
- make sure that your mail system works, the script uses mail(1) to send emails
- edit the file and adapt the SETTINGS-section to your needs. the script will NOT run if you
  omit this
- setup cron to run it daily. best time are the early morning hours so that you already have
  the notifications in your inbox when you check your mail for the first time on that day.
  example crontab entry that runs the script every day at 3 a.m. : 
  
  0 3 * * * perl /path/to/bday-notice.pl

  
csv file 
=========

- the first line of the file must contain the field names. the order does not matter but you need 
  to associate the field names with the required data in the SETTINGS-section of the script. example
  for the first line of the csv file:
  
  "Family Name","Given Name","Some Other Value","Birthday","Whatever You Want" 

- all other lines must contain data sets in the order specified by the header line. example :

  "Bar","Foo","42","1981-06-22","23"
  
- NOTE : if you use kadressbook under KDE, simply klick "File -> Export -> Export CSV List" and follow
         the instructions. similar mechanisms should exist under other applications as well.

	 
known and expected issues
==========================
didn't test this but as data parsing of csv-file is done via 'split /,/' it may brake if fields before
the required ones contain ','-characters.
	 

contact, author, blabla
========================
written by spirit, see http://www.sp1r1t.org/contact for contact info.