NAME

       Encode::IMAPUTF7 - modification of UTF-7 encoding for IMAP

SYNOPSIS

         use Encode qw/encode decode/;
         use Encode::IMAPUTF7;

         print encode('IMAP-UTF-7', 'RA~Xpertoire');
         print decode('IMAP-UTF-7', R&AOk-pertoire');

ABSTRACT

       IMAP mailbox names are encoded in a modified UTF7 when names contains international characters outside of
       the printable ASCII range. The modified UTF-7 encoding is defined in RFC2060 (section 5.1.3).

       There is another CPAN module with same purpose, Unicode::IMAPUtf7. However, it works correctly only with
       strings, which encoded form does not contain plus sign. For example, the Cyrillic string
       \x{043f}\x{0440}\x{0435}\x{0434}\x{043b}\x{043e}\x{0433} is represented in UTF-7 as +BD8EQAQ1BDQEOwQ+BDM-
       Note the second plus sign 4 characters before the end.  Unicode::IMAPUtf7 encodes the above string as
       +BD8EQAQ1BDQEOwQ&BDM- which is not valid modified UTF-7 (the ampersand and the plus are swapped). The
       problem is solved by the current module, which is slightly modified Encode::Unicode::UTF7 and has nothing
       common with Unicode::IMAPUtf7.

RFC2060 - section 5.1.3 - Mailbox International Naming Convention

       By convention, international mailbox names are specified using a modified version of the UTF-7 encoding
       described in [UTF-7].  The purpose of these modifications is to correct the following problems with
       UTF-7:

       1) UTF-7 uses the "+" character for shifting; this conflicts with
          the common use of "+" in mailbox names, in particular USENET
          newsgroup names.

       2) UTF-7's encoding is BASE64 which uses the "/" character; this
          conflicts with the use of "/" as a popular hierarchy delimiter.

       3) UTF-7 prohibits the unencoded usage of "\"; this conflicts with
          the use of "\" as a popular hierarchy delimiter.

       4) UTF-7 prohibits the unencoded usage of "~"; this conflicts with
          the use of "~" in some servers as a home directory indicator.

       5) UTF-7 permits multiple alternate forms to represent the same
          string; in particular, printable US-ASCII chararacters can be
          represented in encoded form.

       In modified UTF-7, printable US-ASCII characters except for "&" represent themselves; that is, characters
       with octet values 0x20-0x25 and 0x27-0x7e.  The character "&" (0x26) is represented by the two- octet
       sequence "&-".

       All other characters (octet values 0x00-0x1f, 0x7f-0xff, and all Unicode 16-bit octets) are represented
       in modified BASE64, with a further modification from [UTF-7] that "," is used instead of "/".  Modified
       BASE64 MUST NOT be used to represent any printing US-ASCII character which can represent itself.

       "&" is used to shift to modified BASE64 and "-" to shift back to US- ASCII.  All names start in US-ASCII,
       and MUST end in US-ASCII (that is, a name that ends with a Unicode 16-bit octet MUST end with a "- ").

       For example, here is a mailbox name which mixes English, Japanese, and Chinese text:

       ~peter/mail/&ZeVnLIqe-/&U,BTFw-

REQUESTS & BUGS

       Please report any requests, suggestions or bugs via the RT bug-tracking system at http://rt.cpan.org/ or
       email to bug-Encode-IMAPUTF7@rt.cpan.org.

       http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Encode-IMAPUTF7 is the RT queue for Encode::IMAPUTF7.  Please
       check to see if your bug has already been reported.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright 2005 Sava Chankov

       Sava Chankov, sava@cpan.org

       This software may be freely copied and distributed under the same terms and conditions as Perl.

AUTHORS

       Peter Makholm <peter@makholm.net>, current maintainer

       Sava Chankov <sava@cpan.org>, original author

SEE ALSO

       perl(1), Encode.