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;

•   limited support for escapes in phrases and comments. There are cases where it can get wrong; and

•   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 the maintainers of this code 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 $s = Mail::Message::Field::Full->new($from_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;

METHODS

  Constructors

Mail::Address->new( $phrase, $address, [ $comment ] )
    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)

    example:

     Mail::Address->new("Perl5 Porters", "perl5-porters@africa.nicoh.com");

$obj->parse($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

    example:

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

  Accessors

$obj->address()
    Return the address part of the object.

$obj->comment()
    Return the comment part of the object

$obj->format(@addresses)
    Return a string representing the address in a suitable form to be placed on a "To", "Cc", or "Bcc" line of a message. This method is called on the first address to be used; other specified addresses will be appended, separated by commas.

$obj->phrase()
    Return the phrase part of the object.

  Smart accessors

$obj->host()
    Return the address excluding the user id and '@'

$obj->name()
    Using the information contained within the object attempt to identify what the person or groups name is.

    Note: This function tries to be smart with the "phrase" of the email address, which is probably a very bad idea. Consider to use phrase() itself.

$obj->user()
    Return the address excluding the '@' and the mail domain

SEE ALSO
This module is part of the MailTools distribution, http://perl.overmeer.net/mailtools/.

AUTHORS
The MailTools bundle was developed by Graham Barr. Later, Mark Overmeer took over maintenance without commitment to further development.

Mail::Cap by Gisle Aas <aas@oslonett.no>. Mail::Field::AddrList by Peter Orbaek <poe@cit.dk>. Mail::Mailer and Mail::Send by Tim Bunce <Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk>. For other contributors see ChangeLog.

LICENSE
Copyrights 1995-2000 Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com> and 2001-2024 Mark Overmeer <perl@overmeer.net>.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html