Many thanks for that example you posted.

I assume that the mail folders are in the format of unix mboxes, ascii-mode, line-by-line.

Yes, they are ascii-mode, with CR/LF's. When I tried the script, a message:

D:\Perl\myscripts>\perl\bin\perl.exe checke~1.pl
Can't locate Mail/Box.pm in @INC (@INC contains: D:/Perl/lib D:/Perl/s
+ite/lib .)
 at checke~1.pl line 5.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at checke~1.pl line 5.
[download]

I then checked for Mail::Box, and it didn't appear to be part of the Active State Perl I have installed. I then used the PPM (version 3.0.1) and did an "install Mail::Box" command, it took about 10 mins, but said everything was okay. However, the same error message appeared.

The PPM search for Mail::Box displayed

ppm> search Mail::Box
Searching in Active Repositories
  1. Mail-Box-Parser-C [3.003] C parser for Mail::Box
[download]

I'm trying to read up more on the documentation also.

Many thanks,

Peter

A Guide to Installing Modules

Hi,

Thanks, I have read most of that now, installed 'nmake', and have been using the

perl -MCPAN -e "shell"

to install the Mail::Box modules and some others.

Peter

Hi Peter, you could read the PPM documentation like what the Anonymous Monk has suggested. Also you probably need all the Mail::Box and its derived modules as well.

I have complete the code I started earlier. The additional code is an example on the kind of thing you could do with the Mail::Box::Manager module. Pretty handy I think.


#C:\Perl\bin\Perl.exe -w
use strict;
use IO::File;
use Data::Dumper;
use Mail::Box;
use Mail::Box::Manager;

# Load mail list
my $MailList = load_mail_list('./list25B6.txt');
print Dumper($MailList);

# Load folder list
my $MailFolder = load_mail_folders('./hierarch.txt');
print Dumper($MailFolder);

# Parse folder files
foreach (values %{$MailFolder}) {
    parse_mail_folder($_);
}

# Optionally output $MailList into another file, etc.

# And other things ...

exit(0);


sub parse_mail_folder
{
    my $folder_file = shift;

    my $mgr = Mail::Box::Manager->new();

    my $folder = $mgr->open($folder_file);

    my @email_addr;
    foreach my $message ($folder->messages)
    {
        my $dest = $message->get('To');  # retrieve the To-address
        @email_addr = split /,/, $dest;  # retrieve multiple addresses

        # assume the email address format is as follows -
        #
        #   John & Jenny Arnold <johnarnold@somedomain.com>
        #
        # you have to tweak a bit if the format is not as expected
        # or use the Mail::Address module to do the trick - to
        # convert the mail address into its canonical form.

        foreach (@email_addr) {
            my ($name, $addr) = /(.*)<(.*)>/;

            $name = s/^\s+//g; # trim spaces at front
            $name = s/\s+$//g; # trim spaces at rear
            $addr = s/^\s+//g; # trim spaces at front
            $addr = s/\s+$//g; # trim spaces at rear

            if (! exists $MailList->{$addr}) {
                # ok, we haven't seen this Email address yet
                $MailList->{$addr} = $name;

                # and do other things
            }
        }
    }
    $folder->close;
}

sub load_mail_list
{
    my $filename = shift;
    my $f = new IO::File $filename, "r" or die "Can not open mail list
+";
    my %mlist;

    # load the header
    chomp($mlist{title}  = <$f>);
    chomp($mlist{sender} = <$f>);
    chomp($mlist{nosig}  = <$f>);
    <$f>;

    # load the rest of the email addresses
    my %MailAddress;
    while (<$f>) {
        chomp;
        my ($name, $email) = /^(.*)\s+<(.*)>$/;
        next if $email eq '';
        $MailAddress{$email} = $name;
    }

    $mlist{mlist} = \%MailAddress;
    return \%mlist;
}

sub load_mail_folders
{
    my $filename = shift;
    my $f = new IO::File $filename, "r" or die "Can not open mail list
+";
    my %mbox;

    while (<$f>) {
        chomp;
        next unless ( $_ ne '' and m/^0,0,/ );
        s/"//g;
        my @fld = split /,/;
        my ($folder) = $fld[2] =~ /.*:.*:(.*)/;
        $mbox{$fld[-1]} = "D:/Pmail/mail/$folder.PPM"; # full path to 
+mboxes
    }
    return \%mbox;
}
[download]

Hi Roger,

Also you probably need all the Mail::Box and its derived modules as well.

I certainly got plenty of these messages

Warning: prerequisite Scalar::Util failed to load: Can't locate Scalar
+/Util.pm in @INC (@INC contains: D:/Perl/lib D:/Perl/site/lib .) at (
+eval 46) line 3.
Warning: prerequisite Test::Harness 1.38 not found at D:/Perl/lib/ExtU
+tils/MakeMaker.pm line 343.
[download]

when running the Makefile.pl from the Mail::Box tar/archive. The problem is, I used

perl -MCPAN -e "shell"
cpan> install Scalar::Util
[download]

and the error message still appeared, even though the install went okay ? Even re-installing Mail::Box

D:\Perl\myscripts>\perl\bin\perl.exe -MCPAN -e "shell"

cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v1.59_54)
ReadLine support available (try 'install Bundle::CPAN')

cpan> install Mail::Box
CPAN: Storable loaded ok
Going to read \.cpan\Metadata
  Database was generated on Tue, 11 Nov 2003 00:45:51 GMT
Mail::Box is up to date.

cpan> q
Lockfile removed.
[download]

and then running the Perl script, still gave the following

D:\Perl\myscripts>\perl\bin\perl.exe checke~1.pl
Can't locate Scalar/Util.pm in @INC (@INC contains: D:/Perl/lib D:/Per
+l/site/lib
 .) at D:/Perl/site/lib/Mail/Reporter.pm line 9.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at D:/Perl/site/lib/Mail/Reporter.pm
+ line 9.
Compilation failed in require at (eval 1) line 3.
        ...propagated at D:/Perl/lib/base.pm line 62.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at D:/Perl/site/lib/Mail/Box.pm line
+ 8.
Compilation failed in require at checke~1.pl line 5.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at checke~1.pl line 5.
[download]

I have checked out all the "prerequisite" warning messages, made a note of those modules, then used the 'MCPAN' / shell to install them. The install appears to go okay, it goes out to the internet , parses through files on FTP sites, and says _that_ module has installed okay. ??

Going back to where I think (but don't really know) where the perl script is stopping, is line 9 of Reporter.pm , which has

Use Scalar::Util 'dualvar';

and I know I have installed _that_ module. The other related code from the error messages are

# msg - "...propagated at D:/Perl/lib/base.pm line 62."

die if $@ && $@ !~ /^Can't locate .*? at \(eval /;

# msg - "compilation aborted at D:/Perl/site/lib/Mail/Box.pm line 8."

use base 'Mail::Reporter';
[download]

I'm just about all debugged out, and have run out of clues.

I have complete the code I started earlier. The additional code is an example on the kind of thing you could do with the Mail::Box::Manager module. Pretty handy I think.

Thanks very much for that additional code, Roger. I guess the big question is, what is different on your Perl setup to mine ??

Thanks a lot, :)

Peter

I never use Windows, so cannot help you with the installation. However, I know that the tests produce many errors and warnings which can be ignored: the Windows users of MailBox seem unable to help me with real fixes for the tests.

For your implementation, I advice one of these two approached: use Mail::Message->build() (look for the details of build in this module by selecting the "methods sorted alphabetically" in the right column).

The other approach may be much simpler: first reconstruct your data into a MIME compliant message, and then call Mail::Message->read($m).

More help available at the mailbox mailinglist.

By the way: best way to parse e-mail addresses from a header line is like this:

   my $msg = Mail::Message->read($data);
   my @addr = $msg->get('To')->addresses;

Hi Mark,

I never use Windows, so cannot help you with the installation. However, I know that the tests produce many errors and warnings which can be ignored: the Windows users of MailBox seem unable to help me with real fixes for the tests.

I have only previously used Perl on a Linux box, and apart from my ignorance of Perl, there have really been no problems. Using it on Windows has been SO different, lots of problems, but I wanted to also use it on Win to improve my Perl skills, plus I save on bandwidth. There are many ad-hoc things I would have previously done in Clipper, but I can see how much more powerful, for tasks of this nature, Perl is.

In regards to getting it all going on Win, fortunately it is all sorted out now. I removed everything, re-installed ActiveState Perl 5.8.0.806, and then tried the sample code that Roger kindly supplied. There were so many error messages (not from Rogers code), that I added the CGI::Carp module to log all the messages out to a file. That was very handy. Then as I found out the cause (looking in various .PM files), I first attempted to install the missing modules by using PPM. However with only two standard repositories and the trouble I had with referencing either local or remote 'repositories', I decided the only (best) option for the missing modules was to download the entire ...tar.gz file in each case, read the 'install/redame' then do the actual install. All of them worked fine, so the underlying problem in using the code supplied was not the code itself, but module dependency. The modules I had to install manually (makefile, ,etc,etc) were:

IO

IO-stringy

Mail-Box

MailTools

TimeDate

then the Perl script worked. There is only one minor problem, where it is not jumping into a 'foreach' loop, but I _think_ that is because I need to do a bit more research on the 'type' of mailbox being opened. :)

For your implementation, I advice one of these two approached: use Mail::Message->build() (look for the details of build in this module by selecting the "methods sorted alphabetically" in the right column).

Thanks for that, I did have a look. In the current task/probem, I'm wanting to read multilple email boxes and check that I have distribution lists up to date. However, I will certainly come back to the "build" because another task is to fix the problems I'm having with using Net::SMTP, so possibly I could look at using Mail::Message instead.

The other approach may be much simpler: first reconstruct your data into a MIME compliant message, and then call Mail::Message->read($m)

That could be a good solution for this problem, because the mailboxes are not what I would call 'standard', if standard means anything of a *nix flavour. I notice when I go to add a new mailbox under Pegasus mail, there is an option to create it in either:

Pegasus Mail v2.X

Unix Mailbox format

unfortunately, the default is the first one, so I think the only remaining problem with using Mail::Box on a Win box is for me to get into a hexviewer and see what is there that is so different to a *nix mailbox. It may be better to just open each mailbox as an ascii file, and then re-create it, for temporary purposes, as a Unix format. The other two subs in Rogers code work perfectly ("load_mail_list" and "load_mail_folders"), but I have a feeling the only reason the 'foreach' loop isn't being executed in sub "parse_mail_folder" is only because the actual mailbox (Pegasus format) is not "normal". There is all the usuall email headers and many of the folders/mailboxes have multi-part messages in them, but the first record has a lot of extra chars in it. :)

More help available at the mailbox mailinglist

Thanks, I will do a little bit more reading on the Mail::Box information in regards to opening mailboxes, and then will ask for help (I did add a "or die" after the open, but it's okay ??)

By the way: best way to parse e-mail addresses from a header line is like this:

   my $msg = Mail::Message->read($data);
   my @addr = $msg->get('To')->addresses;
[download]

The addresses are Mail::Address objects, which are relatively smart. Parsing addresses in reality is a very complicated task.

I will try that method out, the code I had been using

my $mgr = Mail::Box::Manager->new();

my $folder = $mgr->open($folder_file) or die "Cannot open Folder","\n"
+;

my @email_addr;
foreach my $message ($folder->messages)
    {
    print $message->get('Subject') || '<no subject>', "\n";
    print "into foreach loop","\n";
# etc,etc
[download]

.. never gets to print the "into foreach loop", but I guess it is the mailbox 'type'. :)

Thanks for all your help,

Peter