Using a regex probably does it for you. Matching the parenthasised stuff ("(Deferred: ...)") may be problematic if nested parenthesis are allowed. That aside, the following should get you started:

use warnings;
use strict;

my $str = 'k4J37P420342     3256   10021545 May 18 23:07 MAILER-DAEMON
+ (Deferred: Connection reset by somdomain.com.) <someone@somedomain.c
+om>';

my ($code, $addr) = $str =~ /(\S+)(?:[^)]*)\)\s*<([^>]+)/;

print "$code $addr\n" if defined $addr;
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Prints:

k4J37P420342 someone@somedomain.com
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here's the the code, the regex for Deferred is working now, but still I am running out of idea how store multiple recipients associating with the qid, any idea?

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Data::Dumper;

open (Q,"-|" , "cat mailqout" );
my $ref_tomailq= [];
my $coutner = 0;
my $temp_qid;
while(<Q>) {
        # Ignore the banners and totals
        next if  m{ Q-ID  }ix ;

        # Ignore any completed jobs
        #next if m{ ^ .{10,20} \s \(job \s completed\) }x;

        if( m{ ^\w+ }ix ) {
                my @ar_line = split(/\s+/,$_);
                my $num_char = length($ar_line[0]);
                if (  $num_char > "0") {
                        #print "$ar_line[$counter] $ar_line[-1]";
                        $ref_tomailq->[$counter]->{$ar_line[0]}->{"fro
+m"} = $ar_line[-1];
                        $temp_qid = $ar_line[0];
                        $counter++;
                }
        } else {
                my @ar_line = split(/\s+/, $_);
                chomp(@ar_line);
                if ( $ar_line[1]  =~ /\(Deferred:/) {
                        $ref_tomailq->[$counter-1]->{$temp_qid}->{"sta
+tus"} = "deffered";
                } elsif ($ar_line[1] =~ /<{1}\w+>?/) {
                        #print "@ar_line\n";
                        $ref_tomailq->[$counter-1]->{$temp_qid}->{"to"
+} = $ar_line[1]
                }
        }
}

print Dumper($ref_tomailq);
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Thanks.

The code I showed you does that.

/J\

This is a dumb brute-force parser for the output of mailq. If you just want to get the messages from MAILER-DAEMON you can check $entry->{from} when you are iterating over @entries:

my $header = 1;
my @entries;
my $entry = {};
while(<>)
{
   if ($header)
   {
      $header = 0 if /^--/;
      next;
    }
    if (/^(\S+)\s+(\d+)\s+(.+?)\s+<?(\S+)>?/)
    {
       push @entries, $entry if exists $entry->{msg_id};
       $entry = {};
       $entry->{msg_id} = $1;
       $entry->{size}  = $2;
       $msg->{date} = $3;
       $msg->{from} = $4;
    }
    elsif (/\s+\((.*)\)/)
    {
      $entry->{message} = $1;
    }
    elsif ( /\s+<(.*)>?/ )
    {
       $entry->{recipients} = [] unless exists $entry->{recipients};
       push @{$entry->{recipients}}, $1;
    }
}
 
push @entries, $entry if exists $entry->{msg_id};
 
foreach $entry ( @entries )
{
    print $entry->{msg_id}, join " ", @{$entry->{recipients}},"\n";
}
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/J\

Thanks. How would I go about geting the following for all deferred messages: qid, from, all recipients? Is there a better way of doing this besides parsing the output of mailq with regex? Thanks.

That code does it, you just have to look for 'Defered' in $entry->{message}. The only other alternative (for sendmail at least) is to parse all of the 'q' files in /var/spool/mqueue, which will almost certainly by more of a pain.

/J\

Yeah, write some perl that pulls out the first item on the first line and the last on the third line and then prints them out.

(Hint: Include more code and you'll get more helpful responses. See also How (Not) To Ask A Question)

O.K, here's the code, what I am looking for is to be able to associated qid to from,to field of messages with deffered status.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Data::Dumper;

open (Q,"-|" , "cat mailqout" );
my $ref_tomailq= [];
my $coutner = 0;
my $temp_qid;
while(<Q>) {
        # Ignore the banners and totals
        next if m{ ^ ( -----Q-ID----- | \s* / \S+ / | \s+ Total \s req
+uests: | \ S+ \s+ Queue \s+ status ) }ix;

        # Ignore any completed jobs
        next if m{ ^ .{10,20} \s \(job \s completed\) }x;

        if( m{ ^\w+ }ix ) {
                my @ar_line = split(/\s+/,$_);
                my $num_char = length($ar_line[0]);
                if (  $num_char > "0") {
                        print "$ar_line[$counter] $ar_line[-1]";
                        $ref_tomailq->[$counter]->{$ar_line[0]}->{"fro
+m"} = $ar_line[-1];
                        $temp_qid = $ar_line[0];
                        $counter++;
                }
        } else {
                        my @ar_line = split(/\s+/, $_);
                if ($ar_line[1] =~ /Deffered:/) {
                        next;
                } elsif ($ar_line[1] =~ /<{1}\w+>?/) {
                        #my @ar_email = split(/\s+/, $_);
                        chomp(@ar_line);
                        print "@ar_line\n";
                        $ref_tomailq->[$counter-1]->{$temp_qid}->{"to"
+} = $ar_line[1]
                }
        }
}

print Dumper($ref_tomailq);
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output of dumper:

$VAR1 = [
          {
            'k4NDsM423484' => {
                                'to' => '<distribution@abc.com>',
                                'from' => '<support@abc.com>'
                              }
          }
        ];
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This is fined if there is only one recipient, but does not work well with multiple recipient. How can I it in this format?:

$VAR1 = [
          {
            'k4NDsM423484' => {
                                'to' => {'<distribution@abc.com>','noc
+@abc.com' }
                                'from' => '<support@abc.com>'
                              }
          }
        ];
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or

$VAR1 = [
          {
            'k4NDsM423484' => {
                                'to' => ['<distribution@abc.com>','noc
+@abc.com' ]
                                'from' => '<support@abc.com>'
                              }
          }
        ];
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Any idea thanks.

mailq | perl -lane '$/=q[]; print $F[0].q[ ].$F[$#F].$/ unless /^-/;'
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