Email::Address - RFC 2822 Address Parsing and Creation use Email::Address; my @addresses = Email::Address->parse($line); my $address = Email::Address->new(Casey => 'casey@localhost'); print $address->format; This class implements a complete RFC 2822 parser that locates email addresses in strings and returns a list of "Email::Address" objects found. Alternatley you may construct objects manually. The goal of this software is to be correct, and very very fast.

Package Variables
Several regular expressions used in this package are useful to others. For convenience, these variables are declared as package variables that you may access from your program. These regular expressions conform to the rules specified in RFC 2822. You can access these variables using the full namespace. If you want short names, define them yourself. my $addr_spec = $Email::Address::addr_spec; This regular expression defined what an email address is allowed to look like. This regular expression defines an $addr_spec wrapped in angle brackets. This regular expression defines what an email address can look like with an optional preceeding display name, also known as the "phrase". This is the complete regular expression defining an RFC 2822 emial address with an optional preceeding display name and optional following comment.

Class Methods
my @addrs = Email::Address->parse( q[me@local, Casey <me@local>, "Casey" <me@local> (West)] ); This method returns a list of "Email::Address" objects it finds in the input string. The specification for an email address allows for infinitley nestable comments. That's nice in theory, but a little over done. By default this module allows for two (2) levels of nested comments. If you think you need more, modify the $Email::Address::COMMENT_NEST_LEVEL package variable to allow more. $Email::Address::COMMENT_NEST_LEVEL = 10; # I'm deep The reason for this hardly limiting limitation is simple: efficiency. my $address = Email::Address->new(undef, 'casey@local'); my $address = Email::Address->new('Casey West', 'casey@local'); my $address = Email::Address->new(undef, 'casey@local', '(Casey)'); Constructs and returns a new "Email::Address" object. Takes four positional arguments: phrase, email, and comment, and original string. The original string should only really be set using "parse". Email::Address->purge_cache; One way this module stays fast is with internal caches. Caches live in memory and there is the remote possibility that you will have a memory problem. In the off chance that you think you're one of those people, this class method will empty those caches. I've loaded over 12000 objects and not encountered a memory problem. Email::Address->disable_cache if memory_low(); If you'd rather not cache address parses at all, you can disable (and reenable) the Email::Address cache with these methods. The cache is enabled by default.

Instance Methods
my $phrase = $address->phrase; $address->phrase( "Me oh my" ); Accessor and mutator for the phrase portion of an address. my $addr = $address->address; $addr->address( "me@PROTECTED.com" ); Accessor and mutator for the address portion of an address. my $comment = $address->comment; $address->comment( "(Work address)" ); Accessor and mutator for the comment portion of an address. my $orig = $address->original; Accessor for the original address found when parsing, or passed to "new". my $host = $address->host; Accessor for the host portion of an address's address. my $user = $address->user; Accessor for the user portion of an address's address. my $printable = $address->format; Returns a properly formatted RFC 2822 address representing the object. my $name = $address->name; This method tries very hard to determine the name belonging to the address. First the "phrase" is checked. If that doesn't work out the "comment" is looked into. If that still doesn't work out, the "user" portion of the "address" is returned. This method does not try to massage any name it identifies and instead leaves that up to someone else. Who is it to decide if someone wants their name capitalized, or if they're Irish?

Overloaded Operators
print "I have your email address, $address."; Objects stringify to "format" by default. This is also exposed via the "as_string" method.

Did I Mention Fast?
On my 877Mhz 12" Apple Powerbook I can run the distributed benchmarks and get results like this. $ perl -Ilib bench/ea-vs-ma.pl bench/corpus.txt 5 s/iter Mail::Address Email::Address Mail::Address 1.59 -- -31% Email::Address 1.10 45% -- $ perl -Ilib bench/ea-vs-ma.pl bench/corpus.txt 25 s/iter Mail::Address Email::Address Mail::Address 1.58 -- -60% Email::Address 0.630 151% -- $ perl -Ilib bench/ea-vs-ma.pl bench/corpus.txt 50 s/iter Mail::Address Email::Address Mail::Address 1.58 -- -65% Email::Address 0.558 182% -- ...unfortunately, a known bug causes a loss of speed the string to parse has certain known characteristics. This module is maintained by the Perl Email Project L<http://emailproject.perl.org/wiki/Email::Address> Email::Simple, perl. Casey West, <casey@geeknest.com>. Copyright (c) 2004 Casey West. All rights reserved. This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.