Hi all! I am really new to perl. After a lot of searching, borrowing code and getting a qwerty tattoo on my forehead, I could use a hand. Essentially all I am trying to do is create an email filter. I want to search for certain terms. If the term is in the body of the email then save the to, from, date/time and body of the emails that match to a text file. Right now I cannot seem to get the string comparison part correct. The issue is described in the beginning code comment.

# Status - Program flow seems to be correct.  Program IO seems correct
+.  Program connectivity seems correct.
# Issue with string evaluation. Program will not return a match if the
+re if anything MORE than a correct match... 
# i.e. - if $SearchTerms = "blue monkies" and the only thing in the bo
+dy of the email is "blue monkies" it returns
# a match.  But if the body of the email reads "maroon baboons are not
+ blue monkies" no match is returned.
# 1/17/2012 - JLC



# MailCrawl uses 3 arguments:  -h <host> -u <username> -p <password>

# There is a hard coded path to Search_Terms.txt assigned to $InFile. 
+ This is the file containing search terms.  
# Needs to be a standard text file with one search term per line.

# Emails matching the search criteria are saved in a raw text file Ema
+il.<Date>.txt.  Path is hard coded to $OutFile



#!/bin/perl

# import packages
use Net::POP3;
use Getopt::Long;
use strict;
use warnings;



# Declare variables
my $Sec;
my $Min;
my $Hour;
my $MDay;
my $Mon;
my $Year;
my $WDay;
my $YDay;
my $IsDst;
my $Today;
my $InFile;
my $OutFile;
my @SearchTerms;
my $Host;
my $User;
my $Pass;
my $NumMsg;
my $MsgCount;
my $SearchTerms;
my $Msg;
my $MsgList;
my $TermNum;
my $TermCount;
my $Ref;



# Get todays date to be used in output file name

($Sec,$Min,$Hour,$MDay,$Mon,$Year,$WDay,$YDay,$IsDst) =  localtime(tim
+e);
     $Year += 1900;
     $Mon++;
     $Today = "$Mon.$MDay.$Year";
     


# Set file paths

$InFile = 'H:\Tools\MailCrawl\Search_Terms.txt';
$OutFile = 'H:\Tools\MailCrawl\Email_Files\Email.'. $Today . '.txt';




# Load search terms from file into @SearchTerms array

open (SearchTerms, "<$InFile") or die "(ERROR: Unable to open Search_T
+erms).\n";

@SearchTerms = <SearchTerms>;



close (SearchTerms); 



# read command line options
# display usage message in case of error
GetOptions ('h|host=s' => \$Host,
            'u|user=s' => \$User,
            'p|pass=s' => \$Pass) or die("Input error. Try calling me 
+with: -h <host> -u <username> -p <password>");

# initiate connection
# default timeout = 120 sec
my $conn = Net::POP3->new($Host) or die("ERROR: Unable to connect.\n")
+;

# login
$NumMsg = $conn->login($User, $Pass) or die("ERROR: Unable to login.\n
+");



# $MsgCount used to show current message being evaluated

$MsgCount=0;


# get message numbers
# iterate over list and print each

if ($NumMsg > 0) {
    $MsgList = $conn->list();
    
        # Loop for each email msg
        foreach $Msg (keys(%$MsgList)) {
        
            # Set variables to be displayed to show search status
            $TermNum = @SearchTerms;
            $TermCount = 0;
            $MsgCount++;
        
               $Ref = $conn->get($Msg);
            
                # Loop for each search term
                for $SearchTerms (@SearchTerms){
                
                    $TermCount++;
                    print "searching msg $MsgCount of $NumMsg for $Sea
+rchTerms...\n"; 
                    
                        # If match was found, write email to file
                        if (@$Ref ~~ /$SearchTerms/i) {
                            open (EmailFile, ">>$OutFile");
                            print EmailFile "@$Ref \n";
                            close (EmailFile);
                        }
                }
        }
} else {
    print "Mailbox is empty.\n";
}

# close connection
$conn->quit();
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