Re: How to pipe text or load a file directly into mail-mode?

[Adam Funk <a24061@yahoo.com>]

I now have most of this working the way I want, except for launching
emacs in mail-mode.  The Perl program saves its data in a file named
$edit_file (which ends with the suffix ".mail") and calls

    $status = system('emacs', '-nw', $edit_file, '-f', ' mail-mode');

which is equivalent to 

    emacs -nw $FILENAME -f mail-mode

on the command-line.

This launches Emacs with the correct file open, but it says "Mail
(Fundamental)" on the status line and "Symbol's function definition is
void: \ mail-mode" in the minibuffer.

If I then hit M-x mail-mode, it then says "Mail (Mail MC-w Fill)" on
the status line and "Loading sendmail...done" in the minibuffer, and
everything works correctly.

What else do I need to do to get mail-mode to come up initially?