SYNOPSIS

 use Mail::Box::Mbox;
 my $folder = Mail::Box::Mbox->new(folder => $ENV{MAIL}, ...);

See SYNOPSIS in Mail::Box

DESCRIPTION

This documentation describes how Mbox mailboxes work, and also describes what you can do with the Mbox folder object Mail::Box::Mbox.

See DESCRIPTION in Mail::Box::File

DETAILS

Different kinds of folders

See Different kinds of folders in Mail::Box

Available folder types

See Available folder types in Mail::Box

Folder class implementation

See Folder class implementation in Mail::Box

How MBOX folders work

MBOX folders store many messages in one file. Each message begins with a line which starts with the string From . Lines inside a message which accidentally start with From are, in the file, preceded by `>'. This character is stripped when the message is read.

In this respect must be noted that the format of the MBOX files is not strictly defined. The exact content of the separator lines differ between Mail User Agents (MUA's). Besides, some MUAs (like mutt) forget to encode the From lines within message bodies, breaking other parsers....

Simulation of sub-folders

MBOX folders do not have a sub-folder concept as directory based folders do, but this MBOX module tries to simulate them. In this implementation a directory like

 Mail/subject1/

is taken as an empty folder Mail/subject1, with the folders in that directory as sub-folders for it. You may also use

 Mail/subject1
 Mail/subject1.d/

where Mail/subject1 is the folder, and the folders in the Mail/subject1.d directory are used as sub-folders. If your situation is similar to the first example and you want to put messages in that empty folder, the directory is automatically (and transparently) renamed, so that the second situation is reached.