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MIME::Tools(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation MIME::Tools(3)

NAME

MIME-tools - modules for parsing (and creating!) MIME entities

SYNOPSIS

Here's some pretty basic code for ppaarrssiinngg aa MMIIMMEE mmeessssaaggee,, and outputting its decoded components to a given directory: use MIME::Parser;

### Create parser, and set some parsing options:

my $parser = new MIME::Parser;

$parser->outputunder("$ENV{HOME}/mimemail");

### Parse input:

$entity = $parser->parse(\*STDIN) or die "parse failed\n";

### Take a look at the top-level entity (and any parts it has):

$entity->dumpskeleton;

Here's some code which ccoommppoosseess aanndd sseennddss aa MMIIMMEE mmeessssaaggee containing three parts: a text file, an attached GIF, and some more text: use MIME::Entity;

### Create the top-level, and set up the mail headers:

$top = MIME::Entity->build(Type =>"multipart/mixed",

From => "me\@myhost.com", To => "you\@yourhost.com", Subject => "Hello, nurse!");

### Part #1: a simple text document:

$top->attach(Path=>"./testin/short.txt");

### Part #2: a GIF file:

$top->attach(Path => "./docs/mime-sm.gif",

Type => "image/gif", Encoding => "base64");

### Part #3: some literal text:

$top->attach(Data=>$message);

### Send it:

open MAIL, "| /usr/lib/sendmail -t -oi -oem" or die "open: $!";

$top->print(\*MAIL);

close MAIL; For more examples, look at the scripts in the eexxaammpplleess directory of the

MIME-tools distribution.

DESCRIPTION

MIME-tools is a collection of Perl5 MIME:: modules for parsing,

decoding, and generating single- or multipart (even nested multipart)

MIME messages. (Yes, kids, that means you can send messages with attached GIF files). RREEQQUUIIRREEMMEENNTTSS You will need the following installed on your system: File::Path File::Spec IPC::Open2 (optional)

IO::Scalar, ... from the IO-stringy distribution

MIME::Base64 MIME::QuotedPrint Net::SMTP Mail::Internet, ... from the MailTools distribution.

See the Makefile.PL in your distribution for the most-comprehensive

list of prerequisite modules and their version numbers. AA QQUUIICCKK TTOOUURR OOvveerrvviieeww ooff tthhee ccllaasssseess Here are the classes you'll generally be dealing with directly:

(START HERE) results() .---------.

\ .---->| MIME:: |

.------. / | Parser::Results |

| MIME:: |-' `---------'

| Parser |-. .---------.

`------' \ filer() | MIME:: |

| parse() `---->| Parser::Filer |

| gives you `---------'

| head() .----. |

| returns... | MIME:: | get() |

V .---->| Head | etc... |

.----./ `----' |

.--> | MIME:: | |

`---| Entity | .----. |

parts() `----'\ | MIME:: | /

returns `---->| Body |<-----'

sub-entities bodyhandle() `----'

(if any) returns... | open() | returns... | V

.----. read()

| IO:: | getline() | Handle | print()

`----' etc...

To illustrate, parsing works this way: o The "parser" parses the MIME stream. pre i a isac o "MIME::Parser". You hand it an input stream (like a filehandle) to parse a message from: if the parse is successful, the result is an "entity". +o AA ppaarrsseedd mmeessssaaggee iiss rreepprreesseenntteedd bbyy aann ""eennttiittyy"".. An entity is an instance of "MIME::Entity" (a subclass of "Mail::Internet"). If the message had "parts" (e.g., attachments), then those parts are

"entities" as well, contained inside the top-level entity. Each

entity has a "head" and a "body". o The entity's "head" contains information about the message. "head" is an instance of "MIME::Head" (a subclass of "Mail::Header"). It contains information from the message header: content type, sender, subject line, etc. o The entity's "body" knows where the message data is. o cn s to "open" this data source for reading or writing, and you will get back an "I/O handle". +o YYoouu ccaann ooppeenn(()) aa ""bbooddyy"" aanndd ggeett aann ""II//OO hhaannddllee"" ttoo rreeaadd//wwrriittee mmeessssaaggee ddaattaa.. This handle is an object that is basically like an IO::Handle or a FileHandle... it can be any class, so long as it supports a small, standard set of methods for reading from or writing to the underlying data source.

A typical multipart message containing two parts - a textual greeting

and an "attached" GIF file - would be a tree of MIME::Entity objects,

each of which would have its own MIME::Head. Like this:

.----.

| MIME:: | Content-type: multipart/mixed

| Entity | Subject: Happy Samhaine!

`----'

`--.

parts |

| .----.

|--| MIME:: | Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

| | Entity | Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

| `----'

| .----.

|--| MIME:: | Content-type: image/gif

| Entity | Content-transfer-encoding: base64

`----' Content-disposition: inline;

filename="hs.gif" PPaarrssiinngg mmeessssaaggeess You usually start by creating an instance of MMIIMMEE::::PPaarrsseerr and setting up certain parsing parameters: what directory to save extracted files to, how to name the files, etc. You then give that instance a readable filehandle on which waits a MIME message. If all goes well, you will get back a MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy object (a subclass of MMaaiill::::IInntteerrnneett), which consists of... +o A MMIIMMEE::::HHeeaadd (a subclass of MMaaiill::::HHeeaaddeerr) which holds the MIME header data. +o A MMIIMMEE::::BBooddyy, which is a object that knows where the body data is. You ask this object to "open" itself for reading, and it will hand you back an "I/O handle" for reading the data: this is a

FileHandle-like object, and could be of any class, so long as it

conforms to a subset of the IIOO::::HHaannddllee interface. If the original message was a multipart document, the MIME::Entity

object will have a non-empty list of "parts", each of which is in turn

a MIME::Entity (which might also be a multipart entity, etc, etc...). Internally, the parser (in MIME::Parser) asks for instances of MMIIMMEE::::DDeeccooddeerr whenever it needs to decode an encoded file. MIME::Decoder has a mapping from supported encodings (e.g., 'base64') to classes whose instances can decode them. You can add to this mapping to try out new/experiment encodings. You can also use MIME::Decoder by itself. CCoommppoossiinngg mmeessssaaggeess All message composition is done via the MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy class. For

single-part messages, you can use the MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy//bbuuiilldd constructor to

create MIME entities very easily.

For multipart messages, you can start by creating a top-level

"multipart" entity with MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy::::bbuuiilldd(()), and then use the similar MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy::::aattttaacchh(()) method to attach parts to that message. Please note: what most people think of as "a text message with an attached GIF file" is really a multipart message with 2 parts: the first being the text message, and the second being the GIF file. When building MIME a entity, you'll have to provide two very important pieces of information: the content type and the content transfer encoding. The type is usually easy, as it is directly determined by the file format; e.g., an HTML file is "text/html". The encoding, however, is trickier... for example, some HTML files are

"7bit"-compliant, but others might have very long lines and would need

to be sent "quoted-printable" for reliability.

See the section on encoding/decoding for more details, as well as "A MIME PRIMER". SSeennddiinngg eemmaaiill Since MIME::Entity inherits directly from Mail::Internet, you can use the normal Mail::Internet mechanisms to send email. For example,

$entity->smtpsend;

EEnnccooddiinngg//ddeeccooddiinngg ssuuppppoorrtt The MMIIMMEE::::DDeeccooddeerr class can be used to encode as well; this is done when printing MIME entities. All the standard encodings are supported (see "A MIME PRIMER" for details): Encoding: | Normally used when message contents are:

----------------------------------

7bit | 7-bit data with under 1000 chars/line, or multipart.

8bit | 8-bit data with under 1000 chars/line.

binary | 8-bit data with some long lines (or no line breaks).

quoted-printable | Text files with some 8-bit chars (e.g., Latin-1 text).

base64 | Binary files. Which encoding you choose for a given document depends largely on (1) what you know about the document's contents (text vs binary), and (2) whether you need the resulting message to have a reliable encoding for

7-bit Internet email transport.

In general, only "quoted-printable" and "base64" guarantee reliable

transport of all data; the other three "no-encoding" encodings simply

pass the data through, and are only reliable if that data is 7bit ASCII with under 1000 characters per line, and has no conflicts with the multipart boundaries.

I've considered making it so that the content-type and encoding can be

automatically inferred from the file's path, but that seems to be asking for trouble... or at least, for Mail::Cap...

MMeessssaaggee-llooggggiinngg

MIME-tools is a large and complex toolkit which tries to deal with a

wide variety of external input. It's sometimes helpful to see what's really going on behind the scenes. There are several kinds of messages logged by the toolkit itself: Debug messages These are printed directly to the STDERR, with a prefix of

"MIME-tools: debug".

Debug message are only logged if you have turned "debugging" on in

the MIME::Tools configuration.

Warning messages These are logged by the standard Perl warn() mechanism to indicate

an unusual situation. They all have a prefix of "MIME-tools:

warning".

Warning messages are only logged if $^W is set true and MIME::Tools

is not configured to be "quiet". Error messages These are logged by the standard Perl warn() mechanism to indicate that something actually failed. They all have a prefix of

"MIME-tools: error".

Error messages are only logged if $^W is set true and MIME::Tools

is not configured to be "quiet". Usage messages Unlike "typical" warnings above, which warn about problems

processing data, usage-warnings are for alerting developers of

deprecated methods and suspicious invocations.

Usage messages are currently only logged if $^W is set true and

MIME::Tools is not configured to be "quiet".

When a MIME::Parser (or one of its internal helper classes) wants to report a message, it generally does so by recording the message to the MMIIMMEE::::PPaarrsseerr::::RReessuullttss object immediately before invoking the appropriate function above. That means each parsing run has its own

trace-log which can be examined for problems.

CCoonnffiigguurriinngg tthhee ttoooollkkiitt If you want to tweak the way this toolkit works (for example, to turn on debugging), use the routines in the MMIIMMEE::::TToooollss module. debugging Turn debugging on or off. Default is false (off).

MIME::Tools->debugging(1);

quiet Turn the reporting of warning/error messages on or off. Default is true, meaning that these message are silenced.

MIME::Tools->quiet(1);

version Return the toolkit version.

print MIME::Tools->version, "\n";

TTHHIINNGGSS YYOOUU SSHHOOUULLDD DDOO TTaakkee aa llooookk aatt tthhee eexxaammpplleess

The MIME-Tools distribution comes with an "examples" directory. The

scripts in there are basically just tossed-together, but they'll give

you some ideas of how to use the parser. RRuunn wwiitthh wwaarrnniinnggss eennaabblleedd

Always run your Perl script with "-w". If you see a warning about a

deprecated method, change your code ASAP. This will ease upgrades tremendously.

AAvvooiidd nnoonn-ssttaannddaarrdd eennccooddiinnggss

Don't try to MIME-encode using the non-standard MIME encodings. It's

just not a good practice if you want people to be able to read your messages. PPllaann ffoorr tthhrroowwnn eexxcceeppttiioonnss

For example, if your mail-handling code absolutely must not die, then

perform mail parsing like this:

$entity = eval { $parser->parse(\*INPUT) };

Parsing is a complex process, and some components may throw exceptions

if seriously-bad things happen. Since "seriously-bad" is in the eye of

the beholder, you're better off catching possible exceptions instead of asking me to propagate "undef" up the stack. Use of exceptions in reusable modules is one of those religious issues we're never all going to agree upon; thankfully, that's what "eval{}" is good for. CChheecckk tthhee ppaarrsseerr rreessuullttss ffoorr wwaarrnniinnggss//eerrrroorrss As of 5.3xx, the parser tries extremely hard to give you a MIME::Entity. If there were any problems, it logs warnings/errors to the underlying "results" object (see MIME::Parser::Results). Look at that object after each parse. Print out the warnings and errors, especially if messages don't parse the way you thought they would. DDoonn''tt ppllaann oonn pprriinnttiinngg eexxaaccttllyy wwhhaatt yyoouu ppaarrsseedd!! Parsing is a (slightly) lossy operation. Because of things like

ambiguities in base64-encoding, the following is not going to spit out

its input unchanged in all cases:

$entity = $parser->parse(\*STDIN);

$entity->print(\*STDOUT);

If you're using MIME::Tools to process email, remember to save the data

you parse if you want to send it on unchanged. This is vital for

things like PGP-signed email.

UUnnddeerrssttaanndd hhooww iinntteerrnnaattiioonnaall cchhaarraacctteerrss aarree rreepprreesseenntteedd The MIME standard allows for text strings in headers to contain characters from any character set, by using special sequences which look like this:

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?KeldJ=F8rnSimonsen?=

To be consistent with the existing Mail::Field classes, MIME::Tools

does not automatically unencode these strings, since doing so would

lose the character-set information and interfere with the parsing of

fields (see "decodeheaders" in MIME::Parser for a full explanation). That means you should be prepared to deal with these encoded strings. The most common question then is, hhooww ddoo II ddeeccooddee tthheessee eennccooddeedd ssttrriinnggss?? The answer depends on what you want to decode them to: ASCII,

Latin1, UTF-8, etc. Be aware that your "target" representation may not

support all possible character sets you might encounter; for example,

Latin1 (ISO-8859-1) has no way of representing Big5 (Chinese)

characters. A common practice is to represent "untranslateable" characters as "?"s, or to ignore them completely.

To unencode the strings into some of the more-popular Western byte

representations (e.g., Latin1, Latin2, etc.), you can use the decoders in MIME::WordDecoder (see MIME::WordDecoder). The simplest way is by using "unmime()", a function wrapped around your "default" decoder, as follows: use MIME::WordDecoder; ...

$subject = unmime $entity->head->get('subject');

One place this is done automatically is in extracting the recommended filename for a part while parsing. That's why you should start by setting up the best "default" decoder if the default target of Latin1 isn't to your liking. TTHHIINNGGSS II DDOO TTHHAATT YYOOUU SSHHOOUULLDD KKNNOOWW AABBOOUUTT FFuuzzzziinngg ooff CCRRLLFF aanndd nneewwlliinnee oonn iinnppuutt

RFC-1521 dictates that MIME streams have lines terminated by CRLF

("\r\n"). However, it is extremely likely that folks will want to parse MIME streams where each line ends in the local newline character "\n" instead. An attempt has been made to allow the parser to handle both CRLF and

newline-terminated input.

FFuuzzzziinngg ooff CCRRLLFF aanndd nneewwlliinnee wwhheenn ddeeccooddiinngg The "7bit" and "8bit" decoders will decode both a "\n" and a "\r\n"

end-of-line sequence into a "\n".

The "binary" decoder (default if no encoding specified) still outputs stuff verbatim... so a MIME message with CRLFs and no explicit encoding will be output as a text file that, on many systems, will have an annoying ^M at the end of each line... but this is as it should be. FFuuzzzziinngg ooff CCRRLLFF aanndd nneewwlliinnee wwhheenn eennccooddiinngg//ccoommppoossiinngg

All encoders currently output the end-of-line sequence as a "\n", with

the assumption that the local mail agent will perform the conversion from newline to CRLF when sending the mail. However, there probably

should be an option to output CRLF as per RFC-1521.

IInnaabbiilliittyy ttoo hhaannddllee mmuullttiippaarrtt bboouunnddaarriieess wwiitthh eemmbbeeddddeedd nneewwlliinneess Let's get something straight: this is an evil, EVIL practice. If your mailer creates multipart boundary strings that contain newlines, give it two weeks notice and find another one. If your mail robot receives MIME mail like this, regard it as syntactically incorrect, which it is.

IIggnnoorriinngg nnoonn-hheeaaddeerr hheeaaddeerrss

People like to hand the parser raw messages straight from POP3 or from

a mailbox. There is often predictable non-header information in front

of the real headers; e.g., the initial "From" line in the following message:

From - Wed Mar 22 02:13:18 2000

Return-Path:

Subject: Hello The parser simply ignores such stuff quietly. Perhaps it shouldn't, but most people seem to want that behavior. FFuuzzzziinngg ooff eemmppttyy mmuullttiippaarrtt pprreeaammbblleess Please note that there is currently an ambiguity in the way preambles are parsed in. The following message fragments both are regarded as having an empty preamble (where "\n" indicates a newline character):

Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="xyz"\n

Subject: This message (#1) has an empty preamble\n

-xyz\n

...

Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="xyz"\n

Subject: This message (#2) also has an empty preamble\n

\n \n

-xyz\n

...

In both cases, the first completely-empty line (after the "Subject")

marks the end of the header.

But we should clearly ignore the second empty line in message #2, since

it fills the role of "the newline which is only there to make sure that the boundary is at the beginning of a line". Such newlines are never part of the content preceding the boundary; thus, there is no preamble

"content" in message #2.

However, it seems clear that message #1 also has no preamble "content",

and is in fact merely a compact representation of an empty preamble. UUssee ooff aa tteemmpp ffiillee dduurriinngg ppaarrssiinngg Why not do everything in core? Although the amount of core available on even a modest home system continues to grow, the size of attachments continues to grow with it. I wanted to make sure that even users with

small systems could deal with decoding multi-megabyte sounds and movie

files. That means not being core-bound.

As of the released 5.3xx, MIME::Parser gets by with only one temp file open per parser. This temp file provides a sort of infinite scratch space for dealing with the current message part. It's fast and lightweight, but you should know about it anyway. WWhhyy ddoo II aassssuummee tthhaatt MMIIMMEE oobbjjeeccttss aarree eemmaaiill oobbjjeeccttss?? Achim Bohnet once pointed out that MIME headers do nothing more than store a collection of attributes, and thus could be represented as objects which don't inherit from Mail::Header.

I agree in principle, but RFC-1521 says otherwise. RFC-1521 [MIME]

headers are a syntactic subset of RFC-822 [email] headers. Perhaps a

better name for these modules would have been RFC1521:: instead of MIME::, but we're a little beyond that stage now. When I originally wrote these modules for the CPAN, I agonized for a long time about whether or not they really should subclass from MMaaiill::::IInntteerrnneett (then at version 1.17). Thanks to Graham Barr, who

graciously evolved MailTools 1.06 to be more MIME-friendly, unification

was achieved at MIME-tools release 2.0. The benefits in reuse alone

have been substantial. AA MMIIMMEE PPRRIIMMEERR So you need to parse (or create) MIME, but you're not quite up on the specifics? No problem... GGlloossssaarryy

Here are some definitions adapted from RFC-1521 explaining the

terminology we use; each is accompanied by the equivalent in MIME:: module terms... attachment An "attachment" is common slang for any part of a multipart message

- except, perhaps, for the first part, which normally carries a

user message describing the attachments that follow (e.g.: "Hey dude, here's that GIF file I promised you.").

In our system, an attachment is just a MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy under the top-

level entity, probably one of its parts. body The "body" of an entity is that portion of the entity which follows the header and which contains the real message content. For example, if your MIME message has a GIF file attachment, then the

body of that attachment is the base64-encoded GIF file itself.

A body is represented by an instance of MMIIMMEE::::BBooddyy. You get the body of an entity by sending it a bodyhandle() message. body part One of the parts of the body of a multipart //eennttiittyy. A body part has a //hheeaaddeerr and a //bbooddyy, so it makes sense to speak about the body of a body part. Since a body part is just a kind of entity, it's represented by an instance of MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy. entity An "entity" means either a //mmeessssaaggee or a //bbooddyy ppaarrtt. All entities have a //hheeaaddeerr and a //bbooddyy. An entity is represented by an instance of MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy. There are instance methods for recovering the header (a MMIIMMEE::::HHeeaadd) and the body (a MMIIMMEE::::BBooddyy). header This is the top portion of the MIME message, which contains the

"Content-type", "Content-transfer-encoding", etc. Every MIME

entity has a header, represented by an instance of MMIIMMEE::::HHeeaadd. You get the header of an entity by sending it a head() message. message

A "message" generally means the complete (or "top-level") message

being transferred on a network. There currently is no explicit package for "messages"; under MIME::, messages are streams of data which may be read in from files or filehandles. You can think of the MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy returned by the MMIIMMEE::::PPaarrsseerr as representing the full message. CCoonntteenntt ttyyppeess This indicates what kind of data is in the MIME message, usually as majortype/minortype. The standard major types are shown below. A

more-comprehensive listing may be found in RFC-2046.

application Data which does not fit in any of the other categories, particularly data to be processed by some type of application

program. "application/octet-stream", "application/gzip",

"application/postscript"... audio Audio data. "audio/basic"... image Graphics data. "image/gif", "image/jpeg"... message A message, usually another mail or MIME message. "message/rfc822"... multipart A message containing other messages. "multipart/mixed", "multipart/alternative"... text Textual data, meant for humans to read. "text/plain", "text/html"... video Video or video+audio data. "video/mpeg"... CCoonntteenntt ttrraannssffeerr eennccooddiinnggss This is how the message body is packaged up for safe transit. There

are the 5 major MIME encodings. A more-comprehensive listing may be

found in RFC-2045.

7bit No encoding is done at all. This label simply asserts that no

8-bit characters are present, and that lines do not exceed 1000

characters in length (including the CRLF). 8bit No encoding is done at all. This label simply asserts that the

message might contain 8-bit characters, and that lines do not

exceed 1000 characters in length (including the CRLF). binary No encoding is done at all. This label simply asserts that the

message might contain 8-bit characters, and that lines may exceed

1000 characters in length. Such messages are the least likely to get through mail gateways. base64 A standard encoding, which maps arbitrary binary data to the 7bit

domain. Like "uuencode", but very well-defined. This is how you

should send essentially binary information (tar files, GIFs, JPEGs, etc.).

quoted-printable

A standard encoding, which maps arbitrary line-oriented data to the

7bit domain. Useful for encoding messages which are textual in

nature, yet which contain non-ASCII characters (e.g., Latin-1,

Latin-2, or any other 8-bit alphabet).

TTEERRMMSS AANNDD CCOONNDDIITTIIOONNSS Eryq (eryq@zeegee.com), ZeeGee Software Inc (http://www.zeegee.com). David F. Skoll (dfs@roaringpenguin.com) http://www.roaringpenguin.com Copyright (c) 1998, 1999 by ZeeGee Software Inc (www.zeegee.com). Copyright (c) 2004 by Roaring Penguin Software Inc (www.roaringpenguin.com) All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See the COPYING file in the distribution for details. SSUUPPPPOORRTT Please email me directly with questions/problems (see AUTHOR below). If you want to be placed on an email distribution list (not a mailing

list!) for MIME-tools, and receive bug reports, patches, and updates

as to when new MIME-tools releases are planned, just email me and say

so. If your project is using MIME-tools, it might not be a bad idea to

find out about those bugs before they become problems... VVEERRSSIIOONN

$Revision: 1.15 $

CCHHAANNGGEE LLOOGG Version 5.411 RReeggeenneerraatteedd ddooccss.. Bug in HTML docs, now all fixed. Version 5.410 (2000/11/23) BBeetttteerr ddeetteeccttiioonn ooff eevviill ffiilleennaammeess.. Now we check for filenames which are suspiciously long, and a new MIME::Filer::exorcisefilename() method is used to try and remove the evil. Thanks to Jason Haar for the suggestion. Version 5.409 (2000/11/12) AAddddeedd ffuunnccttiioonnaalliittyy ttoo MMIIMMEE::::WWoorrddDDeeccooddeerr,, including support for

plain US-ASCII.

MMIIMMEE::::TToooollss::::ttmmppooppeenn(()) made more flexible. You can now override

the tmpfile-opening behavior.

Version 5.408 (2000/11/10) AAddddeedd nneeww BBeettaa uunnmmiimmee(()) mmeecchhaanniissmm.. See MIME::WordDecoder for full details. Also see "Understand how international characters are represented". Version 5.405 (2000/11/05) AAddddeedd aa ppuurrggee(()) tthhaatt ddooeess wwhhaatt ppeeooppllee wwaanntt iitt ttoo.. Now, when a parse finishes and you want to delete everything that was created by it, you can invoke "purge()" on the parser's filer. All files/directories created during the last parse should vanish. Thanks to everyone who complained about MIME::Entity::purge. Version 5.404 (2000/11/04)

AAddddeedd nneeww aauuttoommaattiicc MMIIMMEE-ddeeccooddiinngg ooff aattttaacchhmmeenntt ffiilleennaammeess wwiitthh

eennccooddeedd ((nnoonn-AASSCCIIII)) cchhaarraacctteerrss.. Hopefully this will do more good

than harm. The use of MIME::Parser::decodeheaders() and MIME::Head::decode() has been deprecated in favor of the new MIME::Words "unmime" mechanism. Please see "unmime" in MIME::Words. AAddddeedd ttoolleerraannccee ffoorr uunnqquuootteedd ==??......??== iinn ppaarraamm vvaalluueess.. This is in violation of the RFCs, but then, so are some MUAs. Thanks to desti for bringing this to my attention.

FFiixxeedd ssuuppppoosseeddllyy-bbaadd BB-eennccooddiinngg.. Thanks to Otto Frost for bringing

this to my attention. Version 5.316 (2000/09/21) IInnccrreeaasseedd ttoolleerraannccee iinn MMIIMMEE::::PPaarrsseerr.. Now will ignore bogus POP3 "+OK" line before header, as well as bogus mailbox "From " line (both with warnings). Thanks to Antony OSullivan (ajos1) for suggesting this feature.

FFiixxeedd ssmmaallll eeppiilloogguuee-rreellaatteedd bbuugg iinn MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy::::pprriinnttbbooddyy(())..

Now it only outputs a final newline if the epilogue does not end in one already. Support for checking the preamble/epilogue in regression tests was also added. Thanks to Lars Hecking for bringing this issue up. UUppddaatteedd ddooccuummeennttaattiioonn.. All module manual pages should now direct

readers to the main MIME-tools manual page.

Version 5.314 (2000/09/06)

Fixed Makefile.PL to have less-restrictive requirement for

File::Spec (0.6). Version 5.313 (2000/09/05) FFiixxeedd nnaassttyy bbuugg wwiitthh eevviill ffiilleennaammeess.. Certain evil filenames were

getting replaced by internally-generated filenames which were just

as evil... ouch! If your parser occasionally throws a fatal

exception with a "write-open" error message, then you have this

bug. Thanks to Julian Field and Antony OSullivan (ajos1) for delivering the evidence! Beware the doctor who cures seasonal head cold by killing patient IImmpprroovveedd nnaammiinngg ooff eexxttrraacctteedd ffiilleess.. If a filename is regarded as evil, we guess that it might just be because of part information, and attempt to find and use the final path element. SSiimmpplliiffiieedd mmeessssaaggee llooggggiinngg aanndd mmaaddee iitt mmoorree ccoonnssiisstteenntt.. For

details, see "Message-logging".

Version 5.312 (2000/09/03) FFiixxeedd aa PPeerrll 55..77 sseelleecctt(()) iinnccoommppaattiibbiilliittyy which caused "make test"

to fail. Thanks to Nick Ing-Simmons for the patch.

Version 5.311 (2000/08/16) BBlliinndd ffiixx ffoorr WWiinn3322 uuuuddeeccooddiinngg bbuugg.. A missing binmode seems to be the culprit here; let's see if this fixes it. Thanks to ajos1 for finding the culprit! The carriage return thumbs its nose at me, laughing: DOS I/O *still* sucks Version 5.310 (2000/08/15)

FFiixxeedd aa bbuugg iinn tthhee bbaacckk-ccoommppaatt oouuttppuuttpprreeffiixx(()) mmeetthhoodd ooff

MMIIMMEE::::PPaarrsseerr.. Basically, output prefixes were not being set through this mechanism. Thanks to ajos1 for the alert.

shift @, ### "shift at-underscore"

or @ will have bogus "self" object AAddddeedd ssoommee bbaacckkccoommppaatt mmeetthhooddss,, like parseFH(). Thanks (and apologies) to Alain Kotoujansky.

AAddddeedd ffiilleennaammeess-wwiitthh-ssppaacceess ssuuppppoorrtt ttoo MMIIMMEE::::DDeeccooddeerr::::UUUU.. Thanks

to Richard Pun for the suggestion. Version 5.305 (2000/07/20) AAddddeedd MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy::::ppaarrttssDDFFSS as convenient way to "get all parts". Thanks to Xavier Armengou for suggesting this method. Removed the Alpha notice. Still a few features to tweak, but those will be minor. Version 5.303 (2000/07/07) FFiixxeedd oouuttppuutt bbuuggss iinn nneeww FFiilleerrss. Scads of them: bad handling of filename collisions, bad implementation of outputunder(), bad linking to results, POD errors, you name it. If this had gone to

CPAN, I'd have issued a factory recall. ":-("

Errors, like beetles, Multiply ferociously In the small hours Version 5.301 (2000/07/06) RREEAADD MMEE BBEEFFOORREE UUPPGGRRAADDIINNGG PPAASSTT TTHHIISS PPOOIINNTT!! NNeeww MMIIMMEE::::PPaarrsseerr::::FFiilleerr

ccllaassss -- nnoott ffuullllyy bbaacckkwwaarrddss-ccoommppaattiibbllee.. In response to demand for

more-comprehensive file-output strategies, I have decided that the

best thing to do is to split all the file-output logic

(outputpath(), evilfilename(), etc.) into its own separate class, inheriting from the new MIME::Parser::Filer class. If you override any of the following in a MIME::Parser subclass, you will need to change your code accordingly: evilfilename outputdir outputfilename outputpath outputprefix outputunder My sincere apologies for any inconvenience this will cause, but it's ultimately for the best, and is quite likely the last structural change to 5.x. Thanks to Tyson Ackland for all the ideas. Incidentally, the new code also fixes a bug where

identically-named files in the same message could clobber each

other. A message arrives: "Here are three files, all named 'Foo'"

Only one survives. :-(

FFiixxeedd bbuugg iinn MMIIMMEE::::WWoorrddss hheeaaddeerr ddeeccooddiinngg.. Underscores were not being handled properly. Thanks to Dominique Unruh and Doru Petrescu, who independently submitted the same fix within 2 hours of each other, after this bug has lain dormant for months: Two users, same bug,

same patch - mere hours apart:

Truly, life is odd. RReemmoovveedd eessccaappiinngg ooff uunnddeerrssccoorree iinn rreeggeexxppss.. Escaping the underscore (\) in regexps was sloppy and wrong (escaped metacharacters may include anything in \w), and the newest Perls warn about it. Thanks to David Dyck for bringing this to my attention. What, then, is a word? Some letters, digits, and, yes: Underscores as well AAddddeedd FFoorrccee ooppttiioonn ttoo MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy''ss mmaakkeemmuullttiippaarrtt. Thanks to Bob Glickstein for suggesting this. NNuummeerroouuss ffiixxlleettss ttoo eexxaammppllee ccooddee.. Thanks to Doru Petrescu for these.

AAddddeedd RREEQQUUIIRREEMMEENNTTSS sseeccttiioonn iinn ddooccss.. Long-overdue. Thanks to Ingo

Schmiegel for motivating this. Version 5.211 (2000/06/24)

FFiixxeedd aauuttoo-uuuuddeeccooddee bbuugg.. Parser was failing with "part did not end

with expected boundary" error when uuencoded entity was a singlepart message (ironically, uuencoded parts of multiparts worked fine). Thanks to Michael Mohlere for testing uudecode and finding this. The hurrying bee Flies far for nectar, missing The nearest flowers Say ten thousand times: Complex cases may succeed Where simple ones fail PPaarrssee eerrrroorrss nnooww ggeenneerraattee wwaarrnniinnggss.. Parser errors now cause warn()s to be generated if they are not turned into fatal exceptions. This might be a little redundant, seeing as they are

available in the "results", but parser-warnings already cause

warn()s. I can always put in a "quiet" switch if people complain. MMiisscceellllaanneeoouuss cclleeaannuupp.. Documentation of MIME::Parser improved slightly, and a redundant warning was removed. Version 5.210 (2000/06/20) CChhaannggee iinn ""eevviill"" ffiilleennaammee.. Made MIME::Parser's evilfilename stricter by having it reject "path" characters: any of '/' '\' ':' '[' ']'. Just as with beauty The eye of the beholder Is where "evil" lives. DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn ffiixxeess.. Corrected a number of docs in MIME::Entity which were obsoleted in the transition from 4.x to 5.x. Thanks to Michael Fischer for pointing these out. For this one, a special

5-5-5-5 Haiku of anagrams:

Documentation in mutant code, O!

Edit - no, CUT! [moan]

I meant to un-doc...

IIOO::::LLiinneess uussaaggee bbuugg ffiixxeedd.. MIME::Entity was missing a "use IO::Lines", which caused an exception when you tried to use the body() method of MIME::Entity. Thanks to Hideyo Imazu and Michael Fischer for pointing this out. Bareword looks fine, but Perl cries: "Whoa there... IO::Lines? Never heard of it." Version 5.209 (2000/06/10) AAuuttooddeetteeccttiioonn ooff uuuueennccooddee.. You can now tell the parser to hunt for uuencode inside what should be text parts. See extractuuencode() for full details. BBeewwaarree:: this is largely untested at the moment. Special thanks to Michael Mohlere at ADJE Webmail, who was the

first - and most-insistent - user to request this feature.

FFaasstteerr ppaarrssiinngg.. Sped up the MIME::Decoder::NBit decoder quite a bit by using a variant of the chunking trick I used for MIME::Decoder::Base64. I suspect that the same trick (reading a big chunk plus the next line to get a big block of lines) would work with MIME::Decoder::QuotedPrint, but I don't have the time or resources to check that right now (tested contributions would be

welcome). NBit encoding is more-conveniently done line-by-line for

now, because individual line lengths must be checked. BBeetttteerr uussee ooff ccoorree.. MIME::Body::InCore is now used when you build() an entity with the Data parameter, instead of MIME::Body::Scalar. MMoorree ddooccuummeennttaattiioonn on toolkit configuration. Version 5.207 (2000/06/09) FFiixxeedd wwhhiinnee(()) bbuugg iinn MMIIMMEE::::PPaarrsseerr where the "warning" method whine() was called as a static function instead of invoked as an instance method. Thanks to Todd A. Bradfute for reporting this. A simple warning Invokes method as function: "Warning" makes us die Version 5.206 (2000/06/08) Ahem. Cough cough: Way too many bugs

Thus, a self-imposed penance:

Write haiku for each FFiixxeedd bbuugg iinn MMIIMMEE::::PPaarrsseerr:: the reader was not handling the odd (but legal) case where a multipart boundary is followed by linear whitespace. Thanks to Jon Agnew for reporting this with the RFC citation. Legal message fails And 'round the globe, thousands cry: READ THE RFC Empty preambles are now handled properly by MIME::Entity when

printing: there is now no space between the header-terminator and

the initial boundary. Thanks to "senml" for suggesting this. Nature hates vacuum But please refrain from tossing Newlines in the void Started using Benchmark for benchmarking. Version 5.205 (2000/06/06) Added terminating newline to all parser messages, and fixed small parser bug that was dropping parts when errors occurred in certain places. Version 5.203 (2000/06/05) Brand new parser based on new (private) MIME::Parser::Reader and (public) MIME::Parser::Results. Fast and yet simple and very tolerant of bad MIME when desired. Message reporting needs some muzzling. MIME::Parser now has ignoreerrors() set true by default. Version 5.116 (2000/05/26) Removed Tmpfile.t test, which was causing a bogus failure in "make test". Now we require 5.004 for MIME::Parser anyway, so we don't need it. Thanks to Jonathan Cohn for reporting this. Version 5.115 (2000/05/24) Fixed Ref.t bug, and documented how to remove parts from a MIME::Entity. Version 5.114 (2000/05/23)

Entity now uses MIME::Lite-style default suggested encoding.

More regression test have been added, and the "Size" tests in Ref.t are skipped for text document (due to CRLF differences between platforms). Version 5.113 (2000/05/21) MMaajjoorr ssppeeeedd aanndd ssttrruuccttuurraall iimmpprroovveemmeennttss ttoo tthhee ppaarrsseerr..

Major, MAJOR thanks to Noel Burton-Krahn, Jeremy Gilbert,

and Doru Petrescu for all the patches, benchmarking,

and Beta-testing!

CCoonnvveenniieenntt nneeww oonnee-ddiirreeccttoorryy-ppeerr-mmeessssaaggee ppaarrssiinngg mmeecchhaanniissmm..

Now through "MIME::Parser" method "outputunder()", you can tell the parser that you want it to create a unique directory for each message parsed, to hold the resulting parts.

EElliimmiinnaattiioonn ooff $$'',, $$`` aanndd $$&&..

Wow... I still can't believe I missed this. D'OH!

Thanks to Noel Burton-Krahn for all his patches.

PPaarrsseerr iiss mmoorree ttoolleerraanntt ooff wweeiirrdd EEOOLL tteerrmmiinnaattiioonn.. Some mailagents are can terminate lines with "\r\r\n". We're okay with that now when we extract the header. Thanks to Joao Fonseca for pointing this out. PPaarrsseerr iiss ttoolleerraanntt ooff ""FFrroomm "" lliinneess iinn hheeaaddeerrss.. Thanks to Joachim Wieland, Anthony Hinsinger, Marius Stan, and numerous others. PPaarrsseerr ccaattcchheess ssyynnttaaxx eerrrroorrss iinn hheeaaddeerrss.. Thanks to Russell P. Sutherland for catching this. PPaarrsseerr nnoo lloonnggeerr wwaarrnnss wwhheenn ssuubbttyyppee iiss uunnddeeffiinneedd..

Thanks to Eric-Olivier Le Bigot for his fix.

BBeetttteerr iinntteeggrraattiioonn wwiitthh MMaaiill::::IInntteerrnneett.. For example, smtpsend() should work fine. Thanks to Michael Fischer and others for the patch. MMiisscceellllaanneeoouuss cclleeaannuupp.. Thanks to Marcus Brinkmann for additional helpful input. Thanks to Klaus Seidenfaden for good feedback on 5.x Alpha! Version 4.123 (1999/05/12)

Cleaned up some of the tests for non-Unix OS'es. Will require a

few iterations, no doubt. Version 4.122 (1999/02/09) RReessoollvveedd CCOORREE::::ooppeenn wwaarrnniinnggss ffoorr 55..000055.. Thanks to several folks for this bug report. Version 4.121 (1998/06/03) FFiixxeedd MMIIMMEE::::WWoorrddss iinnffiinniittee rreeccuurrssiioonn.. Thanks to several folks for this bug report. Version 4.117 (1998/05/01) NNiicceerr MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy::::bbuuiilldd.. No longer outputs warnings with undefined Filename, and now accepts Charset as well. Thanks to Jason Tibbits III for the inspirational patch. DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn ffiixxeess.. Hopefully we've seen the last of the pod2man warnings... BBeetttteerr tteesstt llooggggiinngg.. Now uses ExtUtils::TBone. Version 4.116 (1998/02/14) BBuugg ffiixx:: MIME::Head and MIME::Entity were not downcasing the

content-type as they claimed. This has now been fixed.

Thanks to Rodrigo de Almeida Siqueira for finding this. Version 4.114 (1998/02/12)

GGzziipp6644-eennccooddiinngg hhaass bbeeeenn iimmpprroovveedd,, aanndd ttuurrnneedd ooffff aass aa ddeeffaauulltt,,

since it depends on having gzip installed. See MIME::Decoder::Gzip64 if you want to activate it in your app. You can now set up the gzip/gunzip commands to use, as well. Thanks to Paul J. Schinder for finding this bug. Version 4.113 (1998/01/20) BBuugg ffiixx:: MIME::ParserBase was accidentally folding newlines in header fields. Thanks to Jason L. Tibbitts III for spotting this. Version 4.112 (1998/01/17) MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy::::pprriinnttbbooddyy nnooww rreeccuurrsseess when printing multipart entities, and prints "everything following the header." This is more likely what people expect to happen. PLEASE read the "two body problem" section of MIME::Entity's docs. Version 4.111 (1998/01/14) Clean build/test on Win95 using 5.004. Whew. Version 4.110 (1998/01/11) AAddddeedd makemultipart() and makesinglepart() in MIME::Entity. IImmpprroovveedd handling/saving of preamble/epilogue. Version 4.109 (1998/01/10) Overall MMaajjoorr vveerrssiioonn sshhiifftt ttoo 44..xx accompanies numerous structural

changes, and the deletion of some long-deprecated code.

Many apologies to those who are inconvenienced by the upgrade. MMIIMMEE::::IIOO ddeepprreeccaatteedd.. You'll see IO::Scalar, IO::ScalarArray, and IO::Wrap to make this toolkit work.

MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy ddeeeepp ccooddee.. You can now deep-copy MIME

entities (except for on-disk data files).

Encoding/decoding

MMIIMMEE::::LLaattiinn11 ddeepprreeccaatteedd,, aanndd 88-ttoo-77 mmaappppiinngg rreemmoovveedd..

Really, MIME::Latin1 was one of my more dumber ideas.

It's still there, but if you want to map 8-bit characters

to Latin1 ASCII approximations when 7bit encoding, you'll

have to request it explicitly. But use quoted-printable

for your 8-bit documents; that's what it's there for!

77bbiitt aanndd 88bbiitt ""eennccooddeerrss"" nnoo lloonnggeerr eennccooddee.. As per

RFC-2045, these just do a pass-through of the data, but

they'll warn you if you send bad data through. MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy ssuuggggeessttss eennccooddiinngg.. Now you can ask MIME::Entity's build() method to "suggest" a legal

encoding based on the body and the content-type. No more

guesswork! See the "mimesend" example. NNeeww mmoodduullee ssttrruuccttuurree ffoorr MMIIMMEE::::DDeeccooddeerr ccllaasssseess.. It should be easier for you to see what's happening. NNeeww MMIIMMEE ddeeccooddeerrss!! Support added for decoding

"x-uuencode", and for decoding/encoding "x-gzip64".

You'll need "gzip" to make the latter work.

QQuuootteedd-pprriinnttaabbllee bbaacckk oonn ttrraacckk...... aanndd tthheenn ssoommee.. The

'quoted-printable' decoder now uses the newest

MIME::QuotedPrint, and amends its output with guideline #8

from RFC2049 (From/.). Thanks to Denis N. Antonioli for suggesting this. Parsing PPrreeaammbbllee aanndd eeppiilloogguuee aarree nnooww ssaavveedd.. These are saved in

the parsed entities as simple string-arrays, and are

output by print() if there. Thanks to Jason L. Tibbitts for suggesting this. The "multipart/digest" semantics are now preserved. at of digest messages have their mimetype() defaulted to "message/rfc822" instead of "text/plain", as per the RFC. Thanks to Carsten Heyl for suggesting this. Output

WWeellll-ddeeffiinneedd,, mmoorree-ccoommpplleettee pprriinntt(()) oouuttppuutt.. When printing

an entity, the output is now well-defined if the entity

came from a MIME::Parser, even if using parsenestedmessages. See MIME::Entity for details. YYoouu ccaann pprreevveenntt rreeccoommmmeennddeedd ffiilleennaammeess ffrroomm bbeeiinngg oouuttppuutt.. This possible security hole has been plugged; when building MIME entities, you can specify a body path but suppress the filename in the header. Thanks to Jason L. Tibbitts for suggesting this. Bug fixes WWiinn3322 iinnssttaallllaattiioonnss sshhoouulldd wwoorrkk.. The binmode() calls should work fine on Win32 now. Thanks to numerous folks for their patches. MMIIMMEE::::HHeeaadd::::aadddd(()) now no longer downcases its argument. Thanks to Brandon Browning & Jason L. Tibbitts for finding this bug. Version 3.204 BBuugg iinn MMIIMMEE::::HHeeaadd::::oorriiggiinnaalltteexxtt ffiixxeedd.. Well, it took a while, but another bug surfaced from my transition from 1.x to 2.x. This method was, quite idiotically, sorting the header fields. Thanks, as usual, to Andreas Koenig for spotting this one.

MMIIMMEE::::PPaarrsseerrBBaassee nnoo lloonnggeerr ddeeffaauullttss ttoo RRFFCC-11552222-ddeeccooddiinngg hheeaaddeerrss..

The documentation correctly stated that the default setting

was to not RFC-1522-decode the headers. The code, on the

other hand, was init'ing this parser option in the "on" position. This has been fixed. MMIIMMEE::::PPaarrsseerrBBaassee::::ppaarrsseenneesstteeddmmeessssaaggeess rreeeexxaammiinneedd.. If you

use this feature, please re-read the documentation. It

explains a little more precisely what the ramifications are. MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy ttrriieess hhaarrddeerr ttoo eennssuurree MMIIMMEE ccoommpplliiaannccee.. It is now a fatal error to use certain bad combinations of content type and encoding when "building", or to attempt to "attach" to anything that is not a multipart document. My apologies if this inconveniences anyone, but it was just too darn easy before for folks to create bad MIME, and gosh darn it, good libraries should at least try to protect you from mistakes. The "make" now halts if you don't have the right stuff, provided your MakeMaker supports PREREQPM. See "REQUIREMENTS" for what you need to install this package. I still provide old courtesy copies of the MIME:: decoding modules. Thanks to Hugo van der Sanden for suggesting this. The "make test" is far less chatty. ky oa, TER s evil. Now a "make test" will just give you the important stuff: do a "make test TESTVERBOSE=1" if you want the gory details (advisable if sending me a bug report). Thanks to Andreas Koenig for suggesting this. Version 3.203 NNoo,, tthheerree hhaavveenn''tt bbeeeenn aannyy mmaajjoorr cchhaannggeess bbeettwweeeenn 22..xx aanndd 33..xx..

The major-version increase was from a few more tweaks to get

$VERSION to be calculated better and more efficiently (I had

been using RCS version numbers in a way which created problems for users of CPAN::). After a couple of false starts, all modules have been upgraded to RCS 3.201 or higher.

YYoouu ccaann nnooww ppaarrssee aa MMIIMMEE mmeessssaaggee ffrroomm aa ssccaallaarr,, an array-of-

scalars, or any MIME::IO-compliant object (including IO::

objects.) Take a look at parsedata() in MIME::ParserBase. The parser code has been modified to support the MIME::IO interface. Thanks to fellow Chicagoan Tim Pierce (and countless others) for asking. MMoorree sseennssiibbllee ttoooollkkiitt ccoonnffiigguurraattiioonn.. A new config() method in

MIME::ToolUtils makes a lot of toolkit-wide configuration

cleaner. Your old calls will still work, but with deprecation warnings. YYoouu ccaann nnooww ssiiggnn mmeessssaaggeess just like in Mail::Internet. See MIME::Entity for the interface. YYoouu ccaann nnooww rreemmoovvee ssiiggnnaattuurreess ffrroomm mmeessssaaggeess just like in Mail::Internet. See MIME::Entity for the interface.

YYoouu ccaann nnooww ccoommppuuttee//ssttrriipp ccoonntteenntt lleennggtthhss and other non-

standard MIME fields. See syncheaders() in MIME::Entity. Thanks to Tim Pierce for bringing the basic problem to my attention.

MMaannyy wwaarrnniinnggss aarree nnooww ssiilleenntt uunnlleessss $$^^WW iiss ttrruuee.. That means

unless you run your Perl with "-w", you won't see

deprecation warnings, non-fatal-error messages, etc.

But of course you run with "-w", so this doesn't affect

you. ":-)"

CCoommpplleetteedd tthhee 77-bbiitt eennccooddiinnggss iinn MMIIMMEE::::LLaattiinn11.. We hadn't had

complete coverage in the conversion from 8- to 7-bit; now we

do. Thanks to Rolf Nelson for bringing this to my attention. FFiixxeedd bbrrookkeenn ppaarrsseettwwoo(()) iinn MMIIMMEE::::PPaarrsseerrBBaassee.. BTW, if your code worked with the "broken" code, it should still work. Thanks again to Tim Pierce for bringing this to my attention. Version 2.14

Just a few bug fixes to improve compatibility with Mail-Tools 1.08,

and with the upcoming Perl 5.004 release. Thanks to Jason L. Tibbitts III for reporting the problems so quickly. Version 2.13 New features

AAddddeedd RRFFCC-11552222-ssttyyllee ddeeccooddiinngg ooff eennccooddeedd hheeaaddeerr ffiieellddss..

Header decoding can now be done automatically during parsing via the new "decode()" method in MIME::Head... just tell your parser object that you want to "decodeheaders()". Thanks to Kent Boortz for providing

the idea, and the baseline RFC-1522-decoding code!

BBuuiillddiinngg MMIIMMEE mmeessssaaggeess iiss eevveenn eeaassiieerr.. Now, when you use MIME::Entity's "build()" or "attach()", you can also

supply individual mail headers to set (e.g., "-Subject",

"-From", "-To").

Added "Disposition" to MIME::Entity's "build()" method. Thanks to Kurt Freytag for suggesting this feature.

An "X-Mailer" header is now output by default in all MIME-

Entity-prepared messages, so any bad MIME we generate can

be traced back to this toolkit. Added "purge()" method to MIME::Entity for deleteing leftover files. Thanks to Jason L. Tibbitts III for suggesting this feature.

Added "seek()" and "tell()" methods to built-in MIME::IO

classes. Only guaranteed to work when reading! Thanks to Jason L. Tibbitts III for suggesting this feature. When parsing a multipart message with apparently no boundaries, the error message you get has been improved. Thanks to Andreas Koenig for suggesting this. Bug fixes PPaattcchheedd oovveerr aa PPeerrll 55..000022 ((aanndd mmaayybbee eeaarrlliieerr aanndd llaatteerr)) bbuugg iinnvvoollvviinngg FFiilleeHHaannddllee::::nneewwttmmppffiillee.. It seems that the underlying filehandles were not being closed when the FileHandle objects went out of scope! There is now an internal routine that creates true FileHandle objects for anonymous temp files. Thanks to Dragomir R. Radev and Zyx for reporting the weird behavior that led to the discovery of this bug. MIME::Entity's "build()" method now warns you if you give it an illegal boundary string, and substitutes one of its own. MIME::Entity's "build()" method now generates safer,

fully-RFC-1521-compliant boundary strings.

Bug in MIME::Decoder's "install()" method was fixed. Thanks to Rolf Nelson and Nickolay Saukh for finding this.

Changed FileHandle::newtmpfile to FileHandle->newtmpfile, so

some Perl installations will be happier. Thanks to Larry W. Virden for finding this bug. Gave "=over" an arg of 4 in all PODs. Thanks to Larry W. Virden for pointing out the problems of bare =over's Version 2.04 AA bbuugg iinn MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy''ss oouuttppuutt mmeetthhoodd wwaass ccoorrrreecctteedd.. MIME::Entity::print now outputs everything to the desired filehandle explicitly. Thanks to Jake Morrison for pointing out the incompatibility with Mail::Header. Version 2.03 FFiixxeedd bbuugg iinn aauuttooggeenneerraatteedd ffiilleennaammeess resulting from transposed "if" statement in MIME::Parser, removing spurious printing of header as well. (Annoyingly, this bug is invisible if debugging is turned on!) Thanks to Andreas Koenig for bringing this to my attention. Fixed bug in MIME::Entity::body() where it was using the bodyhandle completely incorrectly. Thanks to Joel Noble for bringing this to my attention. Fixed MIME::Head::VERSION so CPAN:: is happier. Thanks to Larry Virden for bringing this to my attention.

Fixed undefined-variable warnings when dumping skeleton (happened

when there was no Subject: line) Thanks to Joel Noble for bringing this to my attention. Version 2.02 SSttuuppiidd,, ssttuuppiidd bbuuggss iinn bbootthh BBAASSEE6644 eennccooddiinngg aanndd ddeeccooddiinngg wweerree ffiixxeedd.. Thanks to Phil Abercrombie for locating them. Version 2.01 MMoodduulleess nnooww iinnhheerriitt ffrroomm tthhee nneeww MMaaiill:::: mmoodduulleess!! This means big changes in behavior.

MMIIMMEE::::PPaarrsseerr ccaann nnooww ssttoorree mmeessssaaggee ddaattaa iinn-ccoorree.. There were a lot

of requests for this feature. MMIIMMEE::::EEnnttiittyy ccaann nnooww ccoommppoossee mmeessssaaggeess.. There were a lot of requests for this feature.

Added option to parse "message/rfc822" as a pseduo-multipart

document. Thanks to Andreas Koenig for suggesting this. Version 1.13 MIME::Head now no longer requires space after ":", although either a space or a tab after the ":" will be swallowed if there. Thanks to Igor Starovoitov for pointing out this shortcoming. Version 1.12

Fixed bugs in parser where CRLF-terminated lines were blowing out

the handling of preambles/epilogues. Thanks to Russell Sutherland for reporting this bug. Fixed idiotic ismultipart() bug. Thanks to Andreas Koenig for noticing it. Added untested binmode() calls to parser for DOS, etc. systems. No idea if this will work... Reorganized the outputpath() methods to allow easy use of inheritance, as per Achim Bohnet's suggestion. Changed MIME::Head to report mimetype more accurately. POSIX module no longer loaded by Parser if perl >= 5.002. Hey, 5.001'ers: let me know if this breaks stuff, okay? Added unsupported ./examples directory. Version 1.11 Converted over to using Makefile.PL. Thanks to Andreas Koenig for

the much-needed kick in the pants...

Added t/*.t files for testing. Eeeeeeeeeeeh...it's a start. Fixed bug in default parsing routine for generating output paths; it was warning about evil filenames if there simply were no recommended filenames. D'oh! Fixed redefined parts() method in Entity. Fixed bugs in Head where field name wasn't being case folded. Version 1.10 A typo was causing the epilogue of an inner multipart message to be swallowed to the end of the OUTER multipart message; this has now been fixed. Thanks to Igor Starovoitov for reporting this bug. A bad regexp for parameter names was causing some parameters to be parsed incorrectly; this has also been fixed. Thanks again to Igor Starovoitov for reporting this bug. It is now possible to get full control of the filenaming algorithm before output files are generated, and the default algorithm is safer. Thanks to Laurent Amon for pointing out the problems, and suggesting some solutions. Fixed illegal "simple" multipart test file. D'OH! Version 1.9 No changes: 1.8 failed CPAN registration Version 1.8 Fixed incompatibility with 5.001 and FileHandle::newtmpfile Added COPYING file, and improved README. AUTHOR

MIME-tools was created by:

/ \| '| | | |/ ' / Eryq, (eryq@zeegee.com) | /| | | || | || | President, ZeeGee Software Inc. \||| \, |\, | http://www.zeegee.com/ |/ |/

Released as MIME-parser (1.0): 28 April 1996. Released as MIME-tools

(2.0): Halloween 1996. Released as MIME-tools (4.0): Christmas 1997.

Released as MIME-tools (5.0): Mother's Day 2000.

AACCKKNNOOWWLLEEDDGGMMEENNTTSS TThhiiss kkiitt wwoouulldd nnoott hhaavvee bbeeeenn ppoossssiibbllee but for the direct contributions of the following: Gisle Aas The MIME encoding/decoding modules. Laurent Amon Bug reports and suggestions. Graham Barr The new MailTools. Achim Bohnet Numerous good suggestions, including the I/O model.

Kent Boortz Initial code for RFC-1522-decoding of MIME headers.

Andreas Koenig Numerous good ideas, tons of beta testing,

and help with CPAN-friendly packaging.

Igor Starovoitov Bug reports and suggestions. Jason L Tibbitts III Bug reports, suggestions, patches. Not to mention the Accidental Beta Test Team, whose bug reports (and comments) have been invaluable in improving the whole: Phil Abercrombie Mike Blazer Brandon Browning Kurt Freytag Steve Kilbane Jake Morrison Rolf Nelson Joel Noble Michael W. Normandin Tim Pierce Andrew Pimlott Dragomir R. Radev Nickolay Saukh Russell Sutherland Larry Virden Zyx Please forgive me if I've accidentally left you out. Better yet, email me, and I'll put you in.