rfc822
This module defines a class, Message
, which represents a
collection of ``email headers'' as defined by the Internet standard
RFC 822. It is used in various contexts, usually to read such headers
from a file.
Note that there's a separate module to read Unix, MH, and MMDF
style mailbox files: mailbox
.
A Message
instance is instantiated with an open file object as
parameter. The optional seekable
parameter indicates if the
file object is seekable; the default value is 1 for true.
Instantiation reads headers from the file up to a blank line and
stores them in the instance; after instantiation, the file is
positioned directly after the blank line that terminates the headers.
Input lines as read from the file may either be terminated by CR-LF or by a single linefeed; a terminating CR-LF is replaced by a single linefeed before the line is stored.
All header matching is done independent of upper or lower case;
e.g. m['From']
, m['from']
and m['FROM']
all yield
the same result.
parsedate()
tries to guess correctly in such cases.
date is a string containing an RFC822 date, such as
"Mon, 20 Nov 1995 19:12:08 -0500"
. If it succeeds in parsing
the date, parsedate()
returns a 9-tuple that can be passed
directly to time.mktime()
; otherwise None
will be
returned.
parsedate
, but returns either
None
or a 10-tuple; the first 9 elements make up a tuple that
can be passed directly to time.mktime()
, and the tenth is the
offset of the date's time zone from UTC (which is the official term
for Greenwich Mean Time).
guido@CNRI.Reston.Va.US