NAME

       MIME::QuotedPrint - Encoding and decoding of quoted-printable strings

SYNOPSIS

        use MIME::QuotedPrint;

        $encoded = encode_qp($decoded);
        $decoded = decode_qp($encoded);

DESCRIPTION

       This module provides functions to encode and decode strings into and from the quoted-
       printable encoding specified in RFC 2045 - MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions).
       The quoted-printable encoding is intended to represent data that largely consists of bytes
       that correspond to printable characters in the ASCII character set.  Each non-printable
       character (as defined by English Americans) is represented by a triplet consisting of the
       character "=" followed by two hexadecimal digits.

       The following functions are provided:

       encode_qp( $str)
       encode_qp( $str, $eol)
       encode_qp( $str, $eol, $binmode )
           This function returns an encoded version of the string ($str) given as argument.

           The second argument ($eol) is the line-ending sequence to use.  It is optional and
           defaults to "\n".  Every occurrence of "\n" is replaced with this string, and it is
           also used for additional "soft line breaks" to ensure that no line end up longer than
           76 characters.  Pass it as "\015\012" to produce data suitable for external
           consumption.  The string "\r\n" produces the same result on many platforms, but not
           all.

           The third argument ($binmode) will select binary mode if passed as a TRUE value.  In
           binary mode "\n" will be encoded in the same way as any other non-printable character.
           This ensures that a decoder will end up with exactly the same string whatever line
           ending sequence it uses.  In general it is preferable to use the base64 encoding for
           binary data; see MIME::Base64.

           An $eol of "" (the empty string) is special.  In this case, no "soft line breaks" are
           introduced and binary mode is effectively enabled so that any "\n" in the original
           data is encoded as well.

       decode_qp( $str )
           This function returns the plain text version of the string given as argument.  The
           lines of the result are "\n" terminated, even if the $str argument contains "\r\n"
           terminated lines.

       If you prefer not to import these routines into your namespace, you can call them as:

         use MIME::QuotedPrint ();
         $encoded = MIME::QuotedPrint::encode($decoded);
         $decoded = MIME::QuotedPrint::decode($encoded);

       Perl v5.8 and better allow extended Unicode characters in strings.  Such strings cannot be
       encoded directly, as the quoted-printable encoding is only defined for single-byte
       characters.  The solution is to use the Encode module to select the byte encoding you
       want.  For example:

           use MIME::QuotedPrint qw(encode_qp);
           use Encode qw(encode);

           $encoded = encode_qp(encode("UTF-8", "\x{FFFF}\n"));
           print $encoded;

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright 1995-1997,2002-2004 Gisle Aas.

       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO

       MIME::Base64