Mail::Address(3)      User Contributed Perl Documentation     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

       o   no support for address groups, even not with the semi-colon as
           separator between addresses;

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

       o   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 2001-2017 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

perl v5.38.0                      2023-07-25                  Mail::Address(3)