---
name: "Email::Folder::Mbox"
section: "3pm"
platform: "linux"
package: "libemail-folder-perl"
version: "0.860-3"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/Email::Folder::Mbox"
---

# Email::Folder::Mbox(3pm)

reads raw RFC822 mails from an mbox file

## NAME

Email::Folder::Mbox - reads raw RFC822 mails from an mbox file

## VERSION

version 0.860

## SYNOPSIS

This isa Email::Folder::Reader - read about its API there.

## DESCRIPTION

Does exactly what it says on the tin - fetches raw RFC822 mails from an mbox.

The mbox format is described at http://www.qmail.org/man/man5/mbox.html

We attempt to read an mbox as through it's the mboxcl2 variant, falling back to regular mbox mode if there is no `"Content-Length"` header to be found.

### OPTIONS

The new constructor takes extra options.

- "fh"

  When filename is set to `"FH"` than Email::Folder::Mbox will read mbox archive from filehandle `"fh"` instead from disk file `"filename"`.

- "eol"

  This indicates what the line-ending style is to be.  The default is `"\n"`, but for handling files with mac line-endings you would want to specify `"eol => "\x0d""`

- "jwz\_From\_"

  The value is taken as a boolean that governs what is used match as a message separator.

  If false we use the mutt style

  ```
   /^From \S+\s+(?:Mon|Tue|Wed|Thu|Fri|Sat|Sun)/
   /^From (?:Mon|Tue|Wed|Thu|Fri|Sat|Sun)/;
  ```

  If true we use

  ```
   /^From /
  ```

  In deference to this extract from \<http://www.jwz.org/doc/content-length.html\>

  ```
    Essentially the only safe way to parse that file format is to
    consider all lines which begin with the characters ``From ''
    (From-space), which are preceded by a blank line or
    beginning-of-file, to be the division between messages.  That is, the
    delimiter is "\n\nFrom .*\n" except for the very first message in the
    file, where it is "^From .*\n".
    Some people will tell you that you should do stricter parsing on
    those lines: check for user names and dates and so on.  They are
    wrong.  The random crap that has traditionally been dumped into that
    line is without bound; comparing the first five characters is the
    only safe and portable thing to do. Usually, but not always, the next
    token on the line after ``From '' will be a user-id, or email
    address, or UUCP path, and usually the next thing on the line will be
    a date specification, in some format, and usually there's nothing
    after that.  But you can't rely on any of this.
  ```

  Defaults to false.

- "unescape"

  This boolean value indicates whenever lines which starts with

  ```
   /^>+From /
  ```

  should be unescaped (= removed leading '\>' char). This is needed for mboxrd and mboxcl variants. But there is no way to detect for used mbox variant, so default value is false.

- "seek\_to"

  Seek to an offset when opening the mbox.  When used in combination with -\>tell you may be able to resume reading, with a trailing wind.

- "next\_message"

  This returns next message as string

- "next\_messageref"

  This returns next message as ref to string

- "tell"

  This returns the current filehandle position in the mbox.

- "next\_from"

  This returns the From\_ line for next message. Call it before -\>next\_message.

- "messageid"

  This returns the messageid of last read message. Call if after -\>next\_message.

## AUTHORS

- •

  Simon Wistow \<simon@thegestalt.org\>

- •

  Richard Clamp \<richardc@unixbeard.net\>

- •

  Pali \<pali@cpan.org\>

## COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2006 by Simon Wistow.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.