Mail::Mbox::MessageParser - A fast and simple mbox folder reader

Mail::Mbox::MessageParser is a feature-poor but very fast mbox parser. It uses
the best of three strategies for parsing a mailbox: either using cached folder
information, GNU grep, or highly optimized Perl.


NEW IN THIS VERSION

Version 1.4002: Thu Feb  9 2006
- Dropped tzip support. The program seems poorly supported and buggy. (I can't
  get it to run right on Mac, for example.)
- An invalid cache is detected and overwritten. This can occur if one changes
  architectures, or if the cache is otherwise corrupted. 
- Fixed a major memory consumption bug in the Perl implementation, where the
  read buffer would grow exponentially. This caused the module to use memory
  proportional to the size of the mailbox, rather than the size of the largest
  email.


MODULE DEPENDENCIES

To use this module, you will need to install:

- FileHandle::Unget
- Storable: required if you want to use caching
- GNU grep(1): required if you want to use grep support
- bzip2(1): required if you want to use bzip and bzip2 support
- bzip(1): required if you want to use bzip support

You should be prompted to install modules automatically when you run "perl
Makefile.PL".


INSTALLATION

To install this package, change to the directory where you unarchived this
distribution and type the following:

  perl Makefile.PL
  make
  make test
  make install

You can install this package into a non-default location by appending one of
the following to the "perl Makefile.PL" command:

- "PREFIX=/installation/path" (for installation into a custom location),
- "INSTALLDIRS=site" (for installation into site-specific Perl directories)
- "INSTALLDIRS=perl" (for installation into standard Perl directories).

You will be prompted for program locations. You can suppress these prompts by
appending the path to one or more external programs to the "perl Makefile.PL"
command. For example, "GREP=/gnu/bin/grep GZIP=/gnu/bin/gzip BZIP=
BZIP2=/bin/bzip2" would set values for all but one program.  "BZIP=" disables
compression support and prevents interactive execution.  (NOTE: These values
are not validated as they are in the interactive query.)

If you make the installation into your own directory, then remember that you
must tell perl where to search for modules before trying to 'use' them. For
example:

  use lib '/home/userid/lib';
  use Mail::Mbox::MessageParser;

If make test fails, please see the INSTALLATION PROBLEMS section below.


INSTALLATION PROBLEMS

If "make test" fails, run

  make test TEST_VERBOSE=1

and see which test(s) are failing. Please email, to the address below, the
*.testoutput and *.testoutput.diff files for the test, which are located in
t/temp.

For other bugs, see the section REPORTING BUGS below.


DOCUMENTATION

Just "perldoc Mail::Mbox::MessageParser". After installation on Unix systems,
you can also do "man Mail::Mbox::MessageParser". If you are interested in the
Cache, Grep, or Perl implementations, you can do the same for
Mail::Mbox::MessageParser::Cache, Mail::Mbox::MessageParser::Grep. and
Mail::Mbox::MessageParser::Perl


HOMEPAGE

Visit http://sourceforge.net/projects/m-m-msgparser/ for the latest version,
mailing lists, discussion forums, CVS access, and more.


REPORTING BUGS

You can report bugs by filing a bug report at the project homepage. Please
attach the output files noted above. If the bug is related to processing of a
particular mailbox, try to trim the mailbox to the smallest set of emails that
still exhibit the problem.  Then use the "anonymize_mailbox" program that
comes with the distribution to remove any sensitive information, and attach
the mailbox to the bug report.


COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1998-Sep 1 2000 Broc Seib. Copyright (c) Sep 1 2000-2004 David
Coppit. All rights reserved, save those granted by the license.


LICENSE

This code is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).  See
the file LICENSE included in the distribution.


AUTHOR

David Coppit <david@coppit.org>