use warnings; use strict; use MIME::Parser; my $email = 'Subject: none'; my $parser = new MIME::Parser; my $entity = $parser->parse_data ($email) or die "Bad Parse. "; my $subject = $entity->head->get ('subject', 0); my $crap = defined $subject?$ entity->head->get ('Subject', 0) : 'unde­f'; print $crap;