Re: Perl & mail headers

Unix mailboxes are flat files. Each message starts with the pattern:

/^From /
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Immediately following the From_ are the message headers, followed by a blank line, followed by the body of the message. The message ends at the next From_ or at EOF.

As Stevie-O suggests, you'll probably want to use a mail parsing module for this. It's not that hard to write your own, but almost nobody gets it right the first time, and it's easier to just use one of the modules

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Re: Re: Perl & mail headers by nothingmuch (Priest) on Apr 30, 2004 at 13:29 UTC
Lines in the messages matching `/^From /` should be escaped (with a dash), but it's usually better to pay attention to the `Content-Length` and `Content-Lines` headers, provided they exist. Please note that rolling your own can cause some unexpected damage, and that it's been done already (usually pretty well (and many times over)), and made available on the CPAN (see the previous posts). Good luck! -nuffin zz zZ Z Z #!perl	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Perl & mail headers by zakzebrowski (Curate) on Apr 30, 2004 at 12:25 UTC
++ Thanks for the explanation. I was wondering what the file format actually was for mbox. Makes a lot of sense. Cheers! ---- Zak - the office	[reply]