Index for Section 3

Alphabetical listing for M

Bottom of page

Mail::Address(3)
NAME
  Mail::Address - Parse mail addresses

SYNOPSIS
      use Mail::Address;

      my @addrs = Mail::Address->parse($line);

      foreach $addr (@addrs) {
	  print $addr->format,"\n";
      }

DESCRIPTION
  "Mail::Address" extracts and manipulates email addresses from a message
  header.  It cannot be used to extract addresses from some random text.  You
  can use this module to create RFC822 compliant fields.

  Although "Mail::Address" is a very popular subject for books, and is used
  in many applications, it does a very poor job on the more complex message
  fields.  It does only handle simple address formats (which covers about 95%
  of what can be found). Problems are with

  ·   no support for address groups, even not with the semi-colon as
      separator between addresses

  ·   Limitted support for escapes in phrases and comments.  There are cases
      where it can get wrong.

  ·   You have to take care of most escaping when you create an address
      yourself: "Mail::Address" does not do that for you.

  Often requests are made to improve this situation, but this is not a good
  idea, where it will break zillions of existing applications.	If you wish
  for a fully RFC2822 compliant implementation you may take a look at
  Mail::Message::Field::Full, part of MailBox.

  Example:

    my $s = Mail::Message::Field::Full->parse($header);
    # ref $s isa Mail::Message::Field::Addresses;

    my @g = $s->groups;		 # all groups, at least one
    # ref $g[0] isa Mail::Message::Field::AddrGroup;
    my $ga = $g[0]->addresses;	 # group addresses

    my @a = $s->addresses;	 # all addresses
    # ref $a[0] isa Mail::Message::Field::Address;

CONSTRUCTORS
  new( PHRASE,	ADDRESS, [ COMMENT ])
       Mail::Address->new("Perl5 Porters", "perl5-porters@africa.nicoh.com");

      Create a new "Mail::Address" object which represents an address with
      the elements given. In a message these 3 elements would be seen like:

       PHRASE <ADDRESS> (COMMENT)
       ADDRESS (COMMENT)

  parse( LINE )
       Mail::Address->parse($line);

      Parse the given line a return a list of extracted "Mail::Address"
      objects.	The line would normally be one taken from a To,Cc or Bcc line
      in a message

METHODS
  phrase ()
      Return the phrase part of the object.

  address ()
      Return the address part of the object.

  comment ()
      Return the comment part of the object

  format ()
      Return a string representing the address in a suitable form to be
      placed on a To,Cc or Bcc line of a message

  name ()
      Using the information contained within the object attempt to identify
      what the person or groups name is

  host ()
      Return the address excluding the user id and '@'

  user ()
      Return the address excluding the '@' and the mail domain

  path ()
      Unimplemented yet but should return the UUCP path for the message

  canon ()
      Unimplemented yet but should return the UUCP canon for the message

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

COPYRIGHT
  Copyright (c) 2002-2003 Mark Overmeer, 1995-2001 Graham Barr. All rights
  reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
  modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

Index for Section 3

Alphabetical listing for M

Top of page