phpMan > man > MIME::Words(3pm)

NAME
    MIME::Words - deal with RFC 2047 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 AT dkuug.dk>',
              );

        ### Split string into array of decoded [DATA,CHARSET] pairs:
        @decoded = decode_mimewords(
              'To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld AT 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 AT cs.edu>
          To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld AT dkuug.dk>
          CC: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9_?= Pirard <PIRARD AT vm1.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 AT cs.edu>
          To: Keld J/orn Simonsen <keld AT dkuug.dk>
          CC: Andr'e  Pirard <PIRARD AT vm1.be>
          Subject: If you can read this you understand the example... cool!

PUBLIC INTERFACE
    decode_mimewords ENCODED
        *Function.* Go through the string looking for RFC 2047-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".

            $enc = '=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld AT dkuug.dk>';
            foreach (decode_mimewords($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:

    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".

        Warning: this is a quick-and-dirty solution, intended for character sets which overlap
        ASCII. It does not comply with the RFC 2047 rules regarding the use of encoded words in
        message headers. You may want to roll your own variant, using "encode_mimeword()", for your
        application. *Thanks to Jan Kasprzak for reminding me about this problem.*

SEE ALSO
    MIME::Base64, MIME::QuotedPrint, MIME::Tools

    For other implementations of this or similar functionality (particularly, ones with proper UTF8
    support), see:

    Encode::MIME::Header, MIME::EncWords, MIME::AltWords

    At some future point, one of these implementations will likely replace MIME::Words and
    MIME::Words will become deprecated.

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

AUTHOR
    Eryq (eryq AT zeegee.com), ZeeGee Software Inc (http://www.zeegee.com). Dianne Skoll
    (dfs AT 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.