NAME

Mail::Box::MH::Index - keep index files for messages.

CLASS INHERITANCE

Mail::Box::MH::Index is a Mail::Reporter

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

Message folders which store their data in one single file per message are very inefficient for producing subject overviews and for computing message threads. The Mail::Box::MH::Index object is able to store and read a the headers of all messages in one file.

When the Mail::Box::MH::Index functionality is enabled by specifying keep_index when opening a folder, the index file is automatically read. When the folder is closed, a new index file is created.

Special care is taken to avoid problems which occur when the user changes or removes message files without updating the index. If the index is not trustworthy it will not be used (costing some performance for the reader of the folder).

METHODS

Initiation

new OPTIONS

 OPTION               DEFAULT
 filename             <obligatory>
 head_type            'Mail::Message::Head::Subset'
 head_wrap            72
 log                  'WARNINGS'
 trace                'WARNINGS'

filename => FILENAME

The FILENAME which is used to store the headers of all the e-mails for one folder. This must be an absolute pathname.

head_type => CLASS

The type of headers which will be used to store header information when it is read from the index file. You can not be sure the index contains all header line (the mailbox may have been updated without updating the index) so this will usually be (an sub-class of) Mail::Message::Head::Subset.

head_wrap => INTEGER

The preferred number of character in each header line.

log => LEVEL

See Mail::Reporter::new(log)

trace => LEVEL

See Mail::Reporter::new(trace)

The Index

filename

Returns the name of the index file.

get MSGFILE

Look if there is header info for the specified MSGFILE. The filename represents one message in folder type which are organized as directory. This method will return an object of the head_type as specified during creation of the index object, or undef if the information is not known or not trustworthy -i.e. the file size changed.

read

Read the index file. The header objects can after this be requested with the get() method.

write MESSAGES

Write an index file containing the headers specified MESSAGES (Mail::Message objects).

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 2.035.

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.