Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Handle Messages with Mail::Internet

Mail::Internet implements a number of helpful functions for manipulating a mail message. These include body, print_header, and head. Mail::Internet is built on top of Mail::Header, which parses the header of an email message, and it inherits the Mail::Header constructor style that requires that a file descriptor or reference to an array be used. For example:

@lines = <STDIN>;
$mi_obj = new Mail::Internet([@lines]);

reads a mail message from STDIN (using a reference to an array). The following example reads a mail message from a filehandle, FILE:

open(FILE, "/home/nvp/Mail/nvp");
$mi_obj = new Mail::Internet(\*FILE);
close(FILE);

The print_header function outputs the header of a message to a file descriptor; the default is STDOUT:

open(FILE, "/home/nvp/Mail/nvp");
$mi_obj = new Mail::Internet(\*FILE);
close(FILE);
$mi_obj->print_header(\*STDOUT);

The above example might output:

From nvp Mon Jun  9 00:11:10 1997
Received: (from nvp@localhost) by mail.somename.com (8.8/8.8) id
    AAA03248 for nvp; Mon, 9 Jun 1997 00:11:09 -0500 (EST)
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 00:11:09 -0500 (EST)
From: "Nathan V. Patwardhan" <nvp>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: nvp
Subject: pop test
X-Status:
X-Uid: 1
Status: RO

in which print_body also takes a file descriptor as an argument, but outputs only the body of the message, whereas the print function outputs an entire message.