phpman > perldoc > Mail::Address(3pm)

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

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

    *   limited 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 $s = Mail::Message::Field::Full->new($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 AT africa.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 AT oslonett.no>. Mail::Field::AddrList by Peter Orbaek <poe AT cit.dk>.
    Mail::Mailer and Mail::Send by Tim Bunce <Tim.Bunce AT ig.uk>. For other contributors see
    ChangeLog.

LICENSE
    Copyrights 1995-2000 Graham Barr <gbarr AT pobox.com> and 2001-2017 Mark Overmeer
    <perl AT 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