Problems displaying a single message with Mail::Box

BazB has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Greetings folk monks,

I'm currently rewriting a script that used Net::POP3 and Mail::Internet to use the Mail::Box series of modules.

I've been scouring the documentation for Mail::Box and have managed to get most things working - except for displaying a message, either as part of a loop or individually.

What follows is the basic script I'm using:


#! /usr/bin/perl -w # ignoring -T - just testing.

use strict;
use Mail::Box::Manager;

die "Usage: $0 message_number\n"
    unless @ARGV==1;

my $msg_num = shift @ARGV;

my $mailspool = "/var/spool/mail/baz";
my $mgr = Mail::Box::Manager->new;
my $folder = $mgr->open($mailspool);

# Get message specified on command line.
my $message $folder->message($msg_num);

print $message;

$folder->close;
[download]

This code runs without errors and returns

Mail::Box::Mbox::Message=HASH(0x84c560)

Or some other reference to a hash, so I changed print $message to print %$message, only to get the same output.

I'm not finding anything helpful in the Mail::Box-Cookbook or Mail::Box::Mbox::Message manpages.

Is there something that I'm missing here? My code is basically the same as that shown in the Mail::Box manual!

Could someone please enlighten me, please?
I've only found one node ( Mail::Box-addMessage vs. Net::Pop3 ) that even mentions Mail::Box, and it's not relevant to this problem.

Cheers,

BazB.

Comment on Problems displaying a single message with Mail::Box Select or Download Code

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(shockme) Re: Problems displaying a single message with Mail::Box by shockme (Chaplain) on Dec 19, 2001 at 21:43 UTC
Three things that might help: Are you sure the given $msg_num exists? Can you `print $folder->message($msg_num);`? Can you `print $folder->message(0);`? If things get any worse, I'll have to ask you to stop helping me.	[reply]
Re: Re: Problems displaying a single message with Mail::Box by BazB (Priest) on Dec 20, 2001 at 02:35 UTC
shockme, I did have a debug print statement just to check that $msg_num was being set OK, I just omitted it from the code I posted - it's working OK. The message number I've given does exist in the given mailspool. `print $folder->message($msg_num); print $folder->message(0); # first message` [download] These two also produce a reference to a hash, with the first statement giving a different reference than the second (since I have been using $msg_num=2 or 3 as test cases). No joy with those. Cheers. Baz.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Problems displaying a single message with Mail::Box by Juerd (Abbot) on Dec 19, 2001 at 22:13 UTC
Don't ask me why, but the Mail::Box documentation appears to be wrong somehow, or perl's behaviour has changed while the documentation hasn't. `$message` is a Mail::Box::Mbox::Message object, which can't be printed directly. Use `$message->print()`, or `$message->head()` and `$message->body()` if you need a scalar. I think some older perl parsed `print $folder->message(0)` as `$folder->message(0)->print`, but it does `CORE::print($folder->message(0))`. `2;0 juerd@ouranos:~$ perl -e'undef christmas' Segmentation fault 2;139 juerd@ouranos:~$` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Problems displaying a single message with Mail::Box by BazB (Priest) on Dec 20, 2001 at 02:41 UTC
Juerd - Thanks - this does work, but I'm a bit puzzled - where is this documented? `$folder->message($msg_num)->print;` [download] Prints the message out just fine. Is this something that I should consider emailling the author/maintainer about? Cheers. Baz.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Re: Problems displaying a single message with Mail::Box by Juerd (Abbot) on Dec 20, 2001 at 02:47 UTC
The available methods are documented in Mail::Box::Mbox::Message's documentation. You could mail the maintainer about `print $folder->message($num)` not working. `2;0 juerd@ouranos:~$ perl -e'undef christmas' Segmentation fault 2;139 juerd@ouranos:~$` [download]	[reply] [d/l]