Re: deciphering emails in PERL

From: Bob Walton (see_at_sig.invalid)
Date: 10/22/04 

Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 22:04:28 -0400

daniel kaplan wrote:

> i am using net::pop3 to read from my email server, but am having some
> difficulties...
>
> for instance i can easily find the FROM and TO and SUBJECT
>
> but deiphering where the BODY of the message itself is kind of hard....so
> manny headers, and they change depending on the format (HTML vs. NON) and
> the sending app...OE, AOL, etc
>
> i have to think, with the vast exapnse of lib. i see out there for PERL,
> someone has written something? no?

Did you miss the FAQ "How do I parse a mail header"? (in perlfaq9). It
points you to some stuff on CPAN, which is an excellent place to look
for pre-written code to do common tasks in Perl.

The body of a mail message starts after the first null line. You should
be able separate the header from the body with something like:

   my $header;my $body;
   ($header,$body)=split "\n\n",$msg,2;

This assumes you have one message in $msg -- mail messages in a standard
mail file each start with the characters "From " starting in column 1,
without the quotes but including the space (not to be confused with the
"From:" header line). Text lines starting with those characters is
prohibited in messages, and is commonly handled by replacing "From " in
the message body with ">From " if it occurs in column 1.

HTH. 

-- 
Bob Walton
Email: http://bwalton.com/cgi-bin/emailbob.pl

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