Constructors¶

Mail::Field (and it's sub-classes) define several methods which return new objects. These can all be categorized as constructor.

Mail::Field->combine($fields)

Take a LIST of "Mail::Field" objects (which should all be of the same sub-class) and create a new object in that same class.

Mail::Field->extract( $tag, $head [, $index ] )

Takes as arguments the tag name, a "Mail::Head" object and optionally an index.

If the index argument is given then "extract" will retrieve the given tag from the "Mail::Head" object and create a new "Mail::Field" based object. undef will be returned in the field does not exist.

If the index argument is not given the result depends on the context in which "extract" is called. If called in a scalar context the result will be as if "extract" was called with an index value of zero. If called in an array context then all tags will be retrieved and a list of "Mail::Field" objects will be returned.

Mail::Field->new( $tag [, STRING | %options] )

Create an object in the class which defines the field specified by the $tag argument.

"Fake" constructors¶

$obj->create(%options)

This constructor is used internally with preprocessed field information. When called on an existing object, its original content will get replaced.

$obj->parse()

Parse a field line.

Accessors¶

$obj->set(%options)

Change the settings (the content, but then smart) of this field.

$obj->stringify()

Returns the field as a string.

$obj->tag()

Mail::Field->tag()

Return the tag (in the correct case) for this item. Well, actually any casing is OK, because the field tags are treated case-insensitive; however people have some preferences.

Smart accessors¶

$obj->text( [STRING] )

Without arguments, the field is returned as stringify() does. Otherwise, the STRING is parsed with parse() to replace the object's content.

It is more clear to call either stringify() or parse() directly, because this method does not add additional processing.

SUB-CLASS PACKAGE NAMES¶

All sub-classes should be called Mail::Field::name where name is derived from the tag using these rules.

• Consider a tag as being made up of elements separated by '-'
• Convert all characters to lowercase except the first in each element, which should be uppercase.
• name is then created from these elements by using the first N characters from each element.
• N is calculated by using the formula :-

      int((7 + #elements) / #elements)
      

• name is then limited to a maximum of 8 characters, keeping the first 8 characters.

For an example of this take a look at the definition of the "_header_pkg_name()" subroutine in "Mail::Field"