I decided to pick up a script I wrote awhile ago, and get it back on track. I wrote a little about it in Dealing with "Detachments". Here's the issue:

The script is an alias in /etc/mail/aliases, so that incoming mail sent to this address, is sent to my script and processed. Originally, the script required that the key=value pairs in this script had to occur in the body of the message itself, in a template I parse with Config::General. I've added the capability to attach the template to the message itself as an attachment (easier for Outlook/Windows users, apparently). So far, so good.

What I'm trying to do now, is "detach" that attachment, store it in a scalar I can manipulate (or even write it to disk, for the moment. I can deal with IO::Scalar on it later to omit the disk hit). When I detach the file, using MIME::Parser, I have a few options, each with their own confusing quirks:

• Use the output_dir() function, which will write the message to the specified directory, prefixed with "msg" in front of the filename. Oddly, when I do this, I get "msg-$$-1.txt" and "msg-$$-2.extension", where the "$$" is the PID of the process. The "msg-$$-1.txt" file is ALWAYS 0-bytes in size, and the "msg-$$-2.extension" is the exact file that was attached to the message. This means, if I attach 'File.doc' to the message, I get "msg-12345-1.txt" (0-bytes), and "msg-12345-2.doc" (the doc file which was attached).
• I can also use output_under(), which will create a directory of "msg-56754345678-1" or some seemingly random sequence of numbers, and under that, "msg-$$-1.txt" (now 1-byte, a space), and "msg-$$-2.extension" (my target attachment file).
• There is also ignore_filename(1), which I can use to try to override the filename, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to provide the REAL attachment filename.

The code I'm using looks like this:

   my $md5file     = md5_hex($date);
   my $workpath    = "/var/lib/pler";
   my $date        = UnixDate("today","%b %e, %Y at %T");
   my $parser      = new MIME::Parser;

   $parser->output_dir("$workpath");
   $parser->output_prefix("$md5file");
   my $filer       = $parser->filer;
   $filer->ignore_filename(0);
   my $entity      = $parser->read(\*STDIN);
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What I'd like, ideally, is to have the attachment "detached", and named as "$md5file-originalfile.extension", so I can then manipulate it and handle it as a normal file or file-handle-in-a-scalar.

1. How do I get the original filename back when detaching?
2. If I'm using output_under(), how do I know what that long string of numbers (it's not the PID) in the directory name is?
3. Why do I see those *.txt files as 0-byte or 1-byte files? What is their purpose, if the "real" attachment is in a separate file all its own?
4. Is there another (better/more-suited) module for this task?
5. I'm also using Mail::Internet to split the message envelope up so I can get the "From:", "To:" "Subject:" and body out of the message. Should I use MIME::Parser for all of these in one shot? Or should I use both?

Color me confusigated.