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.

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@africa.nicoh.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 with 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@oslonett.no>.  Mail::Field::AddrList by Peter Orbaek
       <poe@cit.dk>.  Mail::Mailer and Mail::Send by Tim Bunce <Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk>.  For other
       contributors see ChangeLog.

LICENSE

       Copyrights 1995-2000 Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com> and 2001-2007 Mark Overmeer
       <perl@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