NAME

Mail::Box::MH::Labels - process file which maintains message related labels

CLASS INHERITANCE

Mail::Box::MH::Labels is a Mail::Reporter

SYNOPSIS

 my $labels = Mail::Box::MH::Labels->new;
 $labels->read(...)
 $labels->write(...)

DESCRIPTION

MH type message folders use one dedicated file per folder-directory to list special tags to messages in that folder. By doing this, mail agents may avoid parsing all the messages, which is very resource consuming.

Labels can be used to group messages, for instance to reflect which messages have been read or which look like spam.

Typically, the file which contains the labels is called .mh_sequences. The MH messages are numbered from 1. As example content for .mh_sequences:

 cur: 93
 unseen: 32 35-56 67-80

To generalize labels on messages, two are treated specially:

• cur

  The cur specifies the number of the message where the user stopped reading mail from this folder at last access. Internally in these modules referred to as label current.

• unseen

  With unseen is listed which message was never read. This must be a mistake in the design of MH: it must be a source of confusion. People should never use labels with a negation in the name:

   if($seen)           if(!$unseen)    #yuk!
   if(!$seen)          if($unseen)
   unless($seen)       unless($unseen) #yuk!

  So: label unseen is translated into seen for internal use.

METHODS

Initiation

new OPTIONS

 OPTION               DEFAULT
 filename             <required>
 log                  'WARNINGS'
 trace                'WARNINGS'

filename => FILENAME

The FILENAME which is used in each directory to store the headers of all mails. The filename must be an absolute path.

log => LEVEL

See Mail::Reporter::new(log)

trace => LEVEL

See Mail::Reporter::new(trace)

The Label Table

filename

Returns the name of the index file.

get MSGNR

Look if there is label info for message MSGNR.

Reading and Writing [internals]

append MESSAGES

Append the label information about the specified MESSAGES to the end of the label file. The information will not be merged with the information already present in the label file.

print FILEHANDLE, MESSAGES

Print the labels of the specified messages to the opened file.

read

Read all label information from file.

write MESSAGES

Write the labels related to the specified messages to the label file.

Logging and Tracing

defaultTrace [LEVEL, [LEVEL]

See Mail::Reporter::defaultTrace()

errors

See Mail::Reporter::errors()

log [LEVEL [,STRINGS]]

See Mail::Reporter::log()

report [LEVEL]

See Mail::Reporter::report()

reportAll [LEVEL]

See Mail::Reporter::reportAll()

trace [LEVEL]

See Mail::Reporter::trace()

warnings

See Mail::Reporter::warnings()

Other Methods

AUTOLOAD

See Mail::Reporter::AUTOLOAD()

DESTROY

See Mail::Reporter::DESTROY()

inGlobalDestruction

See Mail::Reporter::inGlobalDestruction()

logPriority LEVEL

See Mail::Reporter::logPriority()

logSettings

See Mail::Reporter::logSettings()

notImplemented

See Mail::Reporter::notImplemented()

SEE ALSO

A good start to read is Mail::Box-Overview. More documentation and a mailinglist are available from the project's website at http://perl.overmeer.net/mailbox/.

AUTHOR

Written by Mark Overmeer (mark@overmeer.net) with the help of many. See the ChangeLog for details.

VERSION

This code is beta, version 2.029.

Copyright (c) 2001-2002 by the authors. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

cpanm Mail::Box

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Mail::Box