Mail::Message object provides several methods to analyze a message and manipulate messages or parts of a message. Precisely speaking, this module analyzes the specified mail message and build a chain of Mail::Message objects. If not multipart header -> body else if multipart header -> preamble -> part1 -> part2 -> ... -> trailor The link between objects is double link list. Mail::Message class provides several methods to manipulate these structures. Each part of this chain is a Mail::Message object. In other words, one mail message consits of a chain of plural Mail::Message objects in &fml8; internal. For example, "header" is a Mail::Message, which type is text/rfc822-headers and the data is stored as Mail::Header object. Instead "part1" is a Mail::Message object, which type is text/plain and the data is reference to the message string. References: Mail::Message module manual. parse() analyzes the file. The argument is the file name or the file handle for the file which should be specified at the argument. data_type_list() returns information of the chain. The return value is array reference. For example, MIME/multipart consists of the following objects. type[ 1]: text/rfc822-headers | multipart/mixed type[ 2]: multipart/mixed | multipart/mixed type[ 3]: multipart.preamble | multipart/mixed type[ 4]: multipart.delimiter | multipart/mixed type[ 5]: text/plain | multipart/mixed type[ 6]: multipart.delimiter | multipart/mixed type[ 7]: image/gif | multipart/mixed type[ 8]: multipart.close-delimiter | multipart/mixed type[ 9]: text/plain | multipart/mixed The center row is the object type, the right one is the mime type of the whole message (content-type in the mail header). new() method is used to create a new object chain. The following MIME/multipart specific methdos exist. build_mime_multipart_chain($args) parse_and_build_mime_multipart_chain($args) build_mime_header($args) These methods are used internally now. So these will become private methods in the furure. Please do not use these methods. To create a new MIME/mulitpart message, use Mail::Message::Compose. It is MIME::Lite class in fact :-) dup_header() method duplicates only header part of a chain and left the body part as it is. The new chain has different head (header object) but others begining from the second part is same as the original chain. |<--------------- mail body -------------> header0 ----> part1 -> part2 -> ... A | dup_header0 --- whole_message_header() returns the header object of the chain. The return value is a Mail::Message object not string. header_data_type() returns the type of the whole message as string. It tells whether this message is text or multipart. Consider the following object chain. If not multipart header -> body else if multipart header -> preamble -> part1 -> part2 -> ... -> trailor header_data_type() return the type of the whole type. It is known from Content-Type: in the whole message header. whole_message_body() returns body or part1 if multipart. whole_message_body_head() is same. find_first_plaintext_message($args) return the first text/plain type object in the chain. This is useful in filter codes since filter system checks the first text field in a lot of cases. find() searches the specified type of Mail::Message in the object chain and returns the first matched object. print() method is usual print() function. Usually specify the file descriptor as an argument. print() has the concept "mode" to specify CRLF or LF. use set_print_mode(mode) and reset_print_mode() to set the mode. By default, mode is raw. Specify smtp mode in using print() within SMTP codes. size() returns the size of the object not the whole message size. is_empty() tells the object data is empty or not. envelope_sender() returns the envelope sender as string. data_type() returns the type of the object (a part of an object chain) not the whole message type (Content-Type: in the whole message header). encoding_mechanism() returns the encoding mechanism of the object (a part of an object chain) as string. This is not of the whole message encoding mechanism. num_paragraph() returns the number of paragraphs in the data of the object. nth_paragraph(N) returns N-th paragrah as the string. Caution that N starts from 1 not 0. header() returns the header part of a multipart block (header part of an object). data() returns the data part (data part of an object). Respectively, alias of message_fields($size) and message_text($size). Mail::Message manual