I think the question is subtly different from what we've all been answering. Fian didn't ask how to validate an email address, but rather how to match an email address.

In other words, given a file, print everything that looks like an email address. That's a subtly different question from "is this a valid mail address", or even from "Here's a line with a mail address in it, please parse out the relevant bits."

Embedded newlines could wreak even more havoc.

A lot depends on the dataset, and how you define what addresses you're looking for. For example, barewords are syntactically invalid mail addresses, but if I open an xterm and type "mail postmaster" it will probably get delivered.

This is a stickier problem than it appears. You might try using the 822-valid beast from Mastering Regular Expressions, which you can find here.

And please drop a note to tell us you're on the side of good, and aren't trying to scrape email addresses off a website or something.

Peace,
-McD

In reply to Re: pattern match e-mail addresses by McD
in thread pattern match e-mail addresses by Fian

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