NAME

       MIME::Words - deal with RFC 2047 encoded words

SYNOPSIS

       Before reading further, you should see MIME::Tools to make sure that you understand where
       this module fits into the grand scheme of things.  Go on, do it now.  I'll wait.

       Ready?  Ok...

           use MIME::Words qw(:all);

           ### Decode the string into another string, forgetting the charsets:
           $decoded = decode_mimewords(
                 'To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld@dkuug.dk>',
                 );

           ### Split string into array of decoded [DATA,CHARSET] pairs:
           @decoded = decode_mimewords(
                 'To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld@dkuug.dk>',
                 );

           ### Encode a single unsafe word:
           $encoded = encode_mimeword("\xABFran\xE7ois\xBB");

           ### Encode a string, trying to find the unsafe words inside it:
           $encoded = encode_mimewords("Me and \xABFran\xE7ois\xBB in town");

DESCRIPTION

       Fellow Americans, you probably won't know what the hell this module is for.  Europeans,
       Russians, et al, you probably do.  ":-)".

       For example, here's a valid MIME header you might get:

             From: =?US-ASCII?Q?Keith_Moore?= <moore@cs.utk.edu>
             To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld@dkuug.dk>
             CC: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9_?= Pirard <PIRARD@vm1.ulg.ac.be>
             Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?B?SWYgeW91IGNhbiByZWFkIHRoaXMgeW8=?=
              =?ISO-8859-2?B?dSB1bmRlcnN0YW5kIHRoZSBleGFtcGxlLg==?=
              =?US-ASCII?Q?.._cool!?=

       The fields basically decode to (sorry, I can only approximate the Latin characters with 7
       bit sequences /o and 'e):

             From: Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>
             To: Keld J/orn Simonsen <keld@dkuug.dk>
             CC: Andr'e  Pirard <PIRARD@vm1.ulg.ac.be>
             Subject: If you can read this you understand the example... cool!

PUBLIC INTERFACE

       decode_mimewords ENCODED
           Function.  Go through the string looking for RFC 2047-style "Q" (quoted-printable,
           sort of) or "B" (base64) encoding, and decode them.

           In an array context, splits the ENCODED string into a list of decoded "[DATA,
           CHARSET]" pairs, and returns that list.  Unencoded data are returned in a 1-element
           array "[DATA]", giving an effective CHARSET of "undef".

               $enc = '=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld@dkuug.dk>';
               foreach (decode_mimewords($enc)) {
                   print "", ($_->[1] || 'US-ASCII'), ": ", $_->[0], "\n";
               }

           In a scalar context, joins the "data" elements of the above list together, and returns
           that.  Warning: this is information-lossy, and probably not what you want, but if you
           know that all charsets in the ENCODED string are identical, it might be useful to you.
           (Before you use this, please see "unmime" in MIME::WordDecoder, which is probably what
           you want.)

           In the event of a syntax error, $@ will be set to a description of the error, but
           parsing will continue as best as possible (so as to get something back when decoding
           headers).  $@ will be false if no error was detected.

           Any arguments past the ENCODED string are taken to define a hash of options:

       encode_mimeword RAW, [ENCODING], [CHARSET]
           Function.  Encode a single RAW "word" that has unsafe characters.  The "word" will be
           encoded in its entirety.

               ### Encode "<<Franc,ois>>":
               $encoded = encode_mimeword("\xABFran\xE7ois\xBB");

           You may specify the ENCODING ("Q" or "B"), which defaults to "Q".  You may specify the
           CHARSET, which defaults to "iso-8859-1".

       encode_mimewords RAW, [OPTS]
           Function.  Given a RAW string, try to find and encode all "unsafe" sequences of
           characters:

               ### Encode a string with some unsafe "words":
               $encoded = encode_mimewords("Me and \xABFran\xE7ois\xBB");

           Returns the encoded string.  Any arguments past the RAW string are taken to define a
           hash of options:

           Charset
               Encode all unsafe stuff with this charset.  Default is 'ISO-8859-1', a.k.a.
               "Latin-1".

           Encoding
               The encoding to use, "q" or "b".  The default is "q".

           Warning: this is a quick-and-dirty solution, intended for character sets which overlap
           ASCII.  It does not comply with the RFC 2047 rules regarding the use of encoded words
           in message headers.  You may want to roll your own variant, using "encode_mimeword()",
           for your application.  Thanks to Jan Kasprzak for reminding me about this problem.

SEE ALSO

       MIME::Base64, MIME::QuotedPrint, MIME::Tools

       For other implementations of this or similar functionality (particularly, ones with proper
       UTF8 support), see:

       Encode::MIME::Header, MIME::EncWords, MIME::AltWords

       At some future point, one of these implementations will likely replace MIME::Words and
       MIME::Words will become deprecated.

NOTES

       Exports its principle functions by default, in keeping with MIME::Base64 and
       MIME::QuotedPrint.

AUTHOR

       Eryq (eryq@zeegee.com), ZeeGee Software Inc (http://www.zeegee.com).  Dianne Skoll
       (dianne@skoll.ca)

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

       Thanks also to...

             Kent Boortz        For providing the idea, and the baseline
                                RFC-1522-decoding code!
             KJJ at PrimeNet    For requesting that this be split into
                                its own module.
             Stephane Barizien  For reporting a nasty bug.