Mail::Internet

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
CONSTRUCTOR
METHODS
UTILITY METHODS
SEE ALSO
AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT

NAME

Mail::Internet - manipulate Internet format (RFC 822) mail messages

SYNOPSIS

    use Mail::Internet;

DESCRIPTION

This package provides a class object which can be used for reading, creating, manipulating and writing a message with RFC822 compliant headers.

If you start writing a new application, you may want to use the the Mail::Box manpage set of packages (requires perl 5.6.1), which has more features and handles modern messages much better. See http://perl.overmeer.net/mailbox/.

CONSTRUCTOR

new ( [ ARG ], [ OPTIONS ] ): ARG is optional and may be either a file descriptor (reference to a GLOB) or a reference to an array. If given the new object will be initialized with headers and body either from the array of read from the file descriptor.; OPTIONS is a list of options given in the form of key-value pairs, just like a hash table. Valid options are

METHODS

body ( [ BODY ] )

Returns the body of the message. This is a reference to an array. Each entry in the array represents a single line in the message.

If BODY is given, it can be a reference to an array or an array, then the body will be replaced. If a reference is passed, it is used directly and not copied, so any subsequent changes to the array will change the contents of the body.

print_header ( [ FILEHANDLE ] )

print_body ( [ FILEHANDLE ] )

print ( [ FILEHANDLE ] )

Print the header, body or whole message to file descriptor FILEHANDLE. $fd should be a reference to a GLOB. If FILEHANDLE is not given the output will be sent to STDOUT.

    $mail->print( \*STDOUT );  # Print message to STDOUT

as_string ()

Returns the message as a single string.

as_mbox_string ( [ ALREADY_ESCAPED ] )

Returns the message as a string in mbox format. ALREADY_ESCAPED, if given and true, indicates that ->escape_from has already been called on this object.

head ()

Returns the Mail::Header object which holds the headers for the current message

UTILITY METHODS

The following methods are more a utility type than a manipulation type of method.

remove_sig ( [ NLINES ] ): Attempts to remove a users signature from the body of a message. It does this by looking for a line equal to '-- ' within the last NLINES of the message. If found then that line and all lines after it will be removed. If NLINES is not given a default value of 10 will be used. This would be of most use in auto-reply scripts.
tidy_body (): Removes all leading and trailing lines from the body that only contain white spaces.
reply (): Create a new object with header initialised for a reply to the current object. And the body will be a copy of the current message indented.
add_signature ( [ FILE ] ): Append a signature to the message. FILE is a file which contains the signature, if not given then the file ``$ENV{HOME}/.signature'' will be checked for.
send ( [ type [ args.. ]] ): Send a Mail::Internet message using Mail::Mailer. Type and args are passed on to Mail::Mailer
smtpsend ( [ OPTIONS ] ): Send a Mail::Internet message via SMTP, requires Net::SMTP; The return value will be a list of email addresses that the message was sent to. If the message was not sent the list will be empty.; Options are passed as key-value pairs. Current options are
nntppost ( [ OPTIONS ] ): Post an article via NNTP, requires Net::NNTP.; Options are passed as key-value pairs. Current options are
escape_from (): It can cause problems with some applications if a message contains a line starting with `From ', in particular when attempting to split a folder. This method inserts a leading `'> on anyline that matches the regular expression /^*From/>
unescape_from (): This method will remove the escaping added by escape_from

AUTHOR

Graham Barr. Maintained by Mark Overmeer <mailtools@overmeer.net>