Mail::Address - Parse mail addresses use Mail::Address; my @addrs = Mail::Address->parse($line); foreach $addr (@addrs) { print $addr->format,"\n"; } "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; limitted 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 $s = Mail::Message::Field::Full->parse($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;

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 with 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. $obj->user Return the address excluding the '@' and the mail domain This module is part of the MailTools distribution, http://perl.overmeer.net/mailtools/. 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. Copyrights 1995-2000 Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com> and 2001-2007 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