How to validate E-mail addresses

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

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Re: E-mail by DamnDirtyApe (Curate) on Aug 03, 2002 at 22:42 UTC
To do it correctly, it is not a simple regexp. use the Email::Valid module from CPAN. `use Email::Valid; print (Email::Valid->address('maurice@hevanet.com') ? 'yes' : 'no');` [download] _______________ DamnDirtyApe Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. --Friedrich Nietzsche	[reply] [d/l]
Re: E-mail by hacker (Priest) on Aug 04, 2002 at 20:05 UTC
As I'm sure you've found out, this will fail on non-RFC compliant addresses that are deliverable (as detailed in recipe 6.19 of The Perl Cookbook), as well as those people from AOL who don't know their own email address (joe@aol, because everyone uses AOL, right?) Also, with Email::Valid, you should enable the -mxcheck option and do some SMTP afterwards to verify that what you found, has an actual account on the other side.	[reply]
Re: E-mail by Albannach (Monsignor) on Aug 04, 2002 at 02:28 UTC
You should really type `perldoc -q address` at your nearest console and read the well chosen answer. While DamnDirtyApe has suggested a fine and useful module, it does help to be aware that there really is no way to be certain that an e-mail address will work. Actually that is also repeated in the POD for Email::Valid which also references the PerlFAQ, and the cycle continues... If you really want to see a regex that attempts this, I recommend Jeffrey Friedl's wonderful (if slightly outdated now) Mastering Regular Expressions which includes a discussion on just such a beast towards the end. Update: See more good information from larsen at Re: Regex Unexplained Failure in response to a very similar question asked only 20 minutes after yours... -- I'd like to be able to assign to an luser	[reply] [d/l]
Re: How to validate E-mail addresses by hacker (Priest) on Aug 04, 2002 at 08:47 UTC
As I've read in The Perl Cookbook in recipe 6.19 on "Matching a Valid Mail Address", Tom Christiansen's writeups, ckaddr perl script, and fantastic regex, the mention of it in perlfaq9, merlyn's articles on it, and also several hundred other nodes here on PerlMonks describing the same thing, and also Abigail's RFC::RFC822::Address module and RFC::RFC822::Validate module ... there is only ONE way to validate an email address: Send the person and email and see if they respond. Update: Sorry Abigail-II.. corrected.	[reply]
Re: How to validate E-mail addresses by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Aug 05, 2002 at 11:37 UTC
My module is called "RFC::RFC822::Address", and the link you are making is to a different module, written by someone else. Abigail	[reply]
Re: How to validate E-mail addresses by TStanley (Canon) on Aug 04, 2002 at 05:26 UTC
I asked a similar question some time back. Take a look at the responses there. Also note that I used the regex referred to by Albannach in my script. TStanley -------- Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups -- Anonymous	[reply]
Re: How to validate E-mail addresses by adrianh (Chancellor) on Aug 04, 2002 at 10:59 UTC
You might want to consider Mail::CheckUser instead of Email::Valid. It can do a bit more than the basic MX lookup that Email::Valid does. It does lack the address "fudging" and ability to specify rules for local addresses - but that's often not a huge issue.	[reply]