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MIME::Words(3)


NAME

  MIME::Words - deal with RFC-1522 encoded words


SYNOPSIS

  Before reading further, you should see MIME::Tools to make sure that you
  understand where this module fits into the grand scheme of things.  Go on,
  do it now.  I'll wait.

  Ready?  Ok...

      use MIME::Words qw(:all);

      ### Decode the string into another string, forgetting the charsets:
      $decoded = decode_mimewords(
	    'To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld@dkuug.dk>',
	    );

      ### Split string into array of decoded [DATA,CHARSET] pairs:
      @decoded = decode_mimewords(
	    'To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld@dkuug.dk>',
	    );

      ### Encode a single unsafe word:
      $encoded = encode_mimeword("\xABFran\xE7ois\xBB");

      ### Encode a string, trying to find the unsafe words inside it:
      $encoded = encode_mimewords("Me and \xABFran\xE7ois\xBB in town");


DESCRIPTION

  Fellow Americans, you probably won't know what the hell this module is for.
  Europeans, Russians, et al, you probably do.	":-)".

  For example, here's a valid MIME header you might get:

	From: =?US-ASCII?Q?Keith_Moore?= <moore@cs.utk.edu>
	To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld@dkuug.dk>
	CC: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9_?= Pirard <PIRARD@vm1.ulg.ac.be>
	Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?B?SWYgeW91IGNhbiByZWFkIHRoaXMgeW8=?=
	 =?ISO-8859-2?B?dSB1bmRlcnN0YW5kIHRoZSBleGFtcGxlLg==?=
	 =?US-ASCII?Q?.._cool!?=

  The fields basically decode to (sorry, I can only approximate the Latin
  characters with 7 bit sequences /o and 'e):

	From: Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>
	To: Keld J/orn Simonsen <keld@dkuug.dk>
	CC: Andr'e  Pirard <PIRARD@vm1.ulg.ac.be>
	Subject: If you can read this you understand the example... cool!


PUBLIC INTERFACE

  decode_mimewords ENCODED, [OPTS...]
      Function. Go through the string looking for RFC-1522-style "Q"
      (quoted-printable, sort of) or "B" (base64) encoding, and decode them.

      In an array context, splits the ENCODED string into a list of decoded
      "[DATA, CHARSET]" pairs, and returns that list.  Unencoded data are
      returned in a 1-element array "[DATA]", giving an effective CHARSET of
      "undef".

	  $enc = '=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld@dkuug.dk>';
	  foreach (decode_mimewords($enc)) {
	      print "", ($_[1] || 'US-ASCII'), ": ", $_[0], "\n";
	  }

      In a scalar context, joins the "data" elements of the above list
      together, and returns that.  Warning: this is information-lossy, and
      probably not what you want, but if you know that all charsets in the
      ENCODED string are identical, it might be useful to you.	(Before you
      use this, please see "unmime" in MIME::WordDecoder, which is probably
      what you want.)

      In the event of a syntax error, $@ will be set to a description of the
      error, but parsing will continue as best as possible (so as to get
      something back when decoding headers).  $@ will be false if no error
      was detected.

      Any arguments past the ENCODED string are taken to define a hash of
      options:

      Field
	  Name of the mail field this string came from.	 Currently ignored.

  encode_mimeword RAW, [ENCODING], [CHARSET]
      Function. Encode a single RAW "word" that has unsafe characters.	The
      "word" will be encoded in its entirety.

	  ### Encode "<<Franc,ois>>":
	  $encoded = encode_mimeword("\xABFran\xE7ois\xBB");

      You may specify the ENCODING ("Q" or "B"), which defaults to "Q".	 You
      may specify the CHARSET, which defaults to "iso-8859-1".

  encode_mimewords RAW, [OPTS]
      Function. Given a RAW string, try to find and encode all "unsafe"
      sequences of characters:

	  ### Encode a string with some unsafe "words":
	  $encoded = encode_mimewords("Me and \xABFran\xE7ois\xBB");

      Returns the encoded string.  Any arguments past the RAW string are
      taken to define a hash of options:

      Charset
	  Encode all unsafe stuff with this charset.  Default is
	  'ISO-8859-1', a.k.a. "Latin-1".

      Encoding
	  The encoding to use, "q" or "b".  The default is "q".

      Field
	  Name of the mail field this string will be used in.  Currently
	  ignored.

      Warning: this is a quick-and-dirty solution, intended for character
      sets which overlap ASCII.	 It does not comply with the RFC-1522 rules
      regarding the use of encoded words in message headers.  You may want to
      roll your own variant, using "encoded_mimeword()", for your
      application.  Thanks to Jan Kasprzak for reminding me about this
      problem.


NOTES

  Exports its principle functions by default, in keeping with MIME::Base64
  and MIME::QuotedPrint.


AUTHOR

  Eryq (eryq@zeegee.com), ZeeGee Software Inc (http://www.zeegee.com).	David
  F. Skoll (dfs@roaringpenguin.com) http://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.

  Thanks also to...

	Kent Boortz	   For providing the idea, and the baseline
			   RFC-1522-decoding code!
	KJJ at PrimeNet	   For requesting that this be split into
			   its own module.
	Stephane Barizien  For reporting a nasty bug.


VERSION

  $Revision: 1.11 $ $Date: 2005/01/13 19:23:15 $

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