Convert::UUlib - Perl interface to the uulib library (a.k.a. uudeview/uuenview).
use Convert::UUlib ':all'; # read all the files named on the commandline and decode them # into the CURRENT directory. See below for a longer example. LoadFile $_ for @ARGV; for my $uu (GetFileList) { if ($uu->state & FILE_OK) { $uu->decode; print $uu->filename, "\n"; } }
Read the file doc/library.pdf from the distribution for in-depth information about the C-library used in this interface, and the rest of this document and especially the non-trivial decoder program at the end.
ACT_IDLE we don't do anything ACT_SCANNING scanning an input file ACT_DECODING decoding into a temp file ACT_COPYING copying temp to target ACT_ENCODING encoding a file
MSG_MESSAGE just a message, nothing important MSG_NOTE something that should be noticed MSG_WARNING important msg, processing continues MSG_ERROR processing has been terminated MSG_FATAL decoder cannot process further requests MSG_PANIC recovery impossible, app must terminate
OPT_VERSION version number MAJOR.MINORplPATCH (ro) OPT_FAST assumes only one part per file OPT_DUMBNESS switch off the program's intelligence OPT_BRACKPOL give numbers in [] higher precendence OPT_VERBOSE generate informative messages OPT_DESPERATE try to decode incomplete files OPT_IGNREPLY ignore RE:plies (off by default) OPT_OVERWRITE whether it's OK to overwrite ex. files OPT_SAVEPATH prefix to save-files on disk OPT_IGNMODE ignore the original file mode OPT_DEBUG print messages with FILE/LINE info OPT_ERRNO get last error code for RET_IOERR (ro) OPT_PROGRESS retrieve progress information OPT_USETEXT handle text messages OPT_PREAMB handle Mime preambles/epilogues OPT_TINYB64 detect short B64 outside of Mime OPT_ENCEXT extension for single-part encoded files OPT_REMOVE remove input files after decoding (dangerous) OPT_MOREMIME strict MIME adherence OPT_DOTDOT ".."-unescaping has not yet been done on input files OPT_RBUF set default read I/O buffer size in bytes OPT_WBUF set default write I/O buffer size in bytes OPT_AUTOCHECK automatically check file list after every loadfile
RET_OK everything went fine RET_IOERR I/O Error - examine errno RET_NOMEM not enough memory RET_ILLVAL illegal value for operation RET_NODATA decoder didn't find any data RET_NOEND encoded data wasn't ended properly RET_UNSUP unsupported function (encoding) RET_EXISTS file exists (decoding) RET_CONT continue -- special from ScanPart RET_CANCEL operation canceled
This code is zero, i.e. "false": UUFILE_READ Read in, but not further processed The following state codes are or'ed together: FILE_MISPART Missing Part(s) detected FILE_NOBEGIN No 'begin' found FILE_NOEND No 'end' found FILE_NODATA File does not contain valid uudata FILE_OK All Parts found, ready to decode FILE_ERROR Error while decoding FILE_DECODED Successfully decoded FILE_TMPFILE Temporary decoded file exists
UU_ENCODED UUencoded data B64_ENCODED Mime-Base64 data XX_ENCODED XXencoded data BH_ENCODED Binhex encoded PT_ENCODED Plain-Text encoded (MIME) QP_ENCODED Quoted-Printable (MIME) YENC_ENCODED yEnc encoded (non-MIME)
Initialize is automatically called when the module is loaded and allocates quite a small amount of memory for todays machines ;) CleanUp releases that again.
On my machine, a fairly complete decode with DBI backend needs about 10MB RSS to decode 20000 files.
Release memory, file items and clean up files. Should be called after a decoidng run, if you want to start a new one.
See the OPT_xxx constants above to see which options exist.
OPT_xxx
Load the given file and scan it for encoded contents. Optionally tag it with the given id, and if $delflag is true, delete the file after it is no longer necessary. If you are certain of the part number, you can specify it as the last argument.
$delflag
A better (usually faster) way of doing this is using the SetFNameFilter functionality.
SetFNameFilter
If you are desperate, try to call Smerge with increasing $pass values, beginning at 0, to try to merge parts that usually would not have been merged.
Smerge
$pass
0
Most probably this will result in garbled files, so never do this by default, except:
If the OPT_AUTOCHECK option has been disabled (by default it is enabled) to speed up file loading, then you have to call Smerge -1 after loading all files as an additional pre-pass (which is normally done by LoadFile).
OPT_AUTOCHECK
Smerge -1
LoadFile
Return the $item structure for the $item_number'th found file, or undef of no file with that number exists.
$item
$item_number
undef
The first file has number 0, and the series has no holes, so you can iterate over all files by starting with zero and incrementing until you hit undef.
This function has to walk the linear list of fils on each access, so if you want to iterate over all items, it is usually faster to use GetFileList.
GetFileList
Similar to GetFileListItem, but returns all files in one go.
GetFileListItem
Change the ondisk filename where the decoded file will be saved.
Decode the file into a temporary location, use $item->infile to retrieve the temporary filename.
$item->infile
Remove the temporarily decoded file again.
Decode the file to its destination, or the given target path.
Return information about all parts (source files) used to decode the file as a list of hashrefs with the following structure:
{ partno => <integer describing the part number, starting with 1>, # the following member sonly exist when they contain useful information sfname => <local pathname of the file where this part is from>, filename => <the ondisk filename of the decoded file>, subfname => <used to cluster postings, possibly the posting filename>, subject => <the subject of the posting/mail>, origin => <the possible source (From) address>, mimetype => <the possible mimetype of the decoded file>, mimeid => <the id part of the Content-Type>, }
Usually you are interested mostly the sfname and possibly the partno and filename members.
sfname
partno
filename
QuickDecode EncodeMulti EncodePartial EncodeToStream EncodeToFile E_PrepSingle E_PrepPartial
Functions found in this module but not documented in the uulib documentation:
Return a human readable string representing the given action code.
Return a human readable string representing the given error code.
Return the name of the encoding type as a string.
Returns the message level as a string.
Sets (or queries) the FileNameCallback, which is called whenever the decoding library can't find a filename and wants to extract a filename from the subject line of a posting. The callback will be called with two arguments, the subject line and the current candidate for the filename. The latter argument can be undef, which means that no filename could be found (and likely no one exists, so it is safe to also return undef in this case). If it doesn't return anything (not even undef!), then nothing happens, so this is a no-op callback:
sub cb { return (); }
If it returns undef, then this indicates that no filename could be found. In all other cases, the return value is taken to be the filename.
This is a slightly more useful callback:
sub cb { return unless $_[1]; # skip "Re:"-plies et al. my ($subject, $filename) = @_; # if we find some *.rar, take it return $1 if $subject =~ /(\w+\.rar)/; # otherwise just pass what we have return (); }
The general workflow for decoding is like this:
SetOption
SetXXXCallback
CleanUp
What follows is the file example-decoder from the distribution that illustrates the above worklfow in a non-trivial example.
example-decoder
#!/usr/bin/perl # decode all the files in the directory uusrc/ and copy # the resulting files to uudst/ use Convert::UUlib ':all'; sub namefilter { my ($path) = @_; $path=~s/^.*[\/\\]//; $path } sub busycb { my ($action, $curfile, $partno, $numparts, $percent, $fsize) = @_; $_[0]=straction($action); print "busy_callback(", (join ",",@_), ")\n"; 0 } SetOption OPT_RBUF, 128*1024; SetOption OPT_WBUF, 1024*1024; SetOption OPT_IGNMODE, 1; SetOption OPT_IGNMODE, 1; SetOption OPT_VERBOSE, 1; # show the three ways you can set callback functions. I normally # prefer the one with the sub inplace. SetFNameFilter \&namefilter; SetBusyCallback "busycb", 333; SetMsgCallback sub { my ($msg, $level) = @_; print uc strmsglevel $_[1], ": $msg\n"; }; # the following non-trivial FileNameCallback takes care # of some subject lines not detected properly by uulib: SetFileNameCallback sub { return unless $_[1]; # skip "Re:"-plies et al. local $_ = $_[0]; # the following rules are rather effective on some newsgroups, # like alt.binaries.games.anime, where non-mime, uuencoded data # is very common # if we find some *.rar, take it as the filename return $1 if /(\S{3,}\.(?:[rstuvwxyz]\d\d|rar))\s/i; # one common subject format return $1 if /- "(.{2,}?\..+?)" (?:yenc )?\(\d+\/\d+\)/i; # - filename.par (04/55) return $1 if /- "?(\S{3,}\.\S+?)"? (?:yenc )?\(\d+\/\d+\)/i; # - (xxx) No. 1 sayuri81.jpg 756565 bytes # - (20 files) No.17 Roseanne.jpg [2/2] return $1 if /No\.[ 0-9]+ (\S+\....) (?:\d+ bytes )?\[/; # try to detect some common forms of filenames return $1 if /([a-z0-9_\-+.]{3,}\.[a-z]{3,4}(?:.\d+))/i; # otherwise just pass what we have () }; # now read all files in the directory uusrc/* for (<uusrc/*>) { my ($retval, $count) = LoadFile ($_, $_, 1); print "file($_), status(", strerror $retval, ") parts($count)\n"; } SetOption OPT_SAVEPATH, "uudst/"; # now wade through all files and their source parts for my $uu (GetFileList) { print "file ", $uu->filename, "\n"; print " state ", $uu->state, "\n"; print " mode ", $uu->mode, "\n"; print " uudet ", strencoding $uu->uudet, "\n"; print " size ", $uu->size, "\n"; print " subfname ", $uu->subfname, "\n"; print " mimeid ", $uu->mimeid, "\n"; print " mimetype ", $uu->mimetype, "\n"; # print additional info about all parts print " parts"; for ($uu->parts) { for my $k (sort keys %$_) { print " $k=$_->{$k}"; } print "\n"; } $uu->remove_temp; if (my $err = $uu->decode) { print " ERROR ", strerror $err, "\n"; } else { print " successfully saved as uudst/", $uu->filename, "\n"; } } print "cleanup...\n"; CleanUp;
This module supports the perlmulticore standard (see http://perlmulticore.schmorp.de/ for more info) for the following functions - generally these are functions accessing the disk and/or using considerable CPU time:
LoadFile $item->decode $item->decode_temp $item->remove_temp $item->info
The perl interpreter will be reacquired/released on every callback invocation, so for performance reasons, callbacks should be avoided if that is costly.
Future versions might enable multicore support for more functions.
The original uulib library this module uses was written at a time where main memory of measured in megabytes and buffer overflows as a security thign didn't exist. While a lot of security fixes have been applied over the years (includign some defense in depth mechanism that can shield against a lot of as-of-yet undetected bugs), using this library for security purposes requires care.
Likewise, file sizes when the uulib library was written were tiny compared to today, so do not expect this library to handle files larger than 2GB.
Lastly, this module uses a very "C-like" interface, which means it doesn't protect you from invalid points as you might expect from "more perlish" modules - for example, accessing a file item object after callinbg CleanUp will likely result in crashes, memory corruption, or worse.
Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>, the original uulib library was written by Frank Pilhofer <fp@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de>, and later heavily bugfixed by Marc Lehmann.
perl(1), uudeview homepage at http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview/.
To install Convert::UUlib, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm Convert::UUlib
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install Convert::UUlib
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.