hello,

i am downloading email with perl from a pop server. until now I haven't had any problems being able to read subject lines, that is to say I can read the letters and numbers and so forth, even though sometimes subjects are complete gibberish.

anyhow, i've been getting several emails that contain what I believe is a UTF16 string embeded in the subject header.

as it appears on the webmail's (hotmail) view source:

Subject: username, A Ne=?UTF-16?B?dwAgAEMAcgBlAGQAaQB0ACAAQwBhAHIAZAAg
+AEMAbwB1AGwAZAAgAEIAZQAgAEgAZQBhAGQAZQBkACAAWQBvAHUAcgAgAFcAYQB5AA==?
+=

[download]
(all on one line)

which is also exactly how the data looks like when downloaded via pop

when viewing that specific email in a browser on hotmail, the "A Ne*string*" appears as:

A New Credit Card Could Be Headed Your Way

now I just can't figure out for the life of me how I'm supposed to decode that string. I'll use regex to grab the ?UTF part and then decode it:

print decode( "UTF-16be", $string ), "\n";

but all that returns is a bunch of non english (japanese i think) characters and symbols

what is the proper way to decode that string so as i could actually read out the proper subject?

In reply to decoding a UTF-16B string found in an email subject by neaj

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.