# Ruby Library for dealing with mbox files

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-library-for-dealing-with-mbox-files/113303>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [August 29, 2007, 5:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-library-for-dealing-with-mbox-files/113303 "2007-08-29T17:57:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Booker\_Bense](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@Booker\_Bense](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Booker_Bense)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2007, 5:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-library-for-dealing-with-mbox-files/113303/1 "2007-08-29T17:57:11Z")

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I’m working on rewriting my email filtering hacks and I need a  
library that can parse unix mbox file format where the embedded  
'\nFrom ’ in a message are not quoted. (i.e. one that knows about the  
Header Content-Length ).

I’ve been using the rmail library in

rubymail-0.17

plus my own hack to parse the mbox file. ( rubymail’s parser  
crashes when give such a file. ) I think I have a fix for  
this, but I thought I would check if there are any more recent  
projects that can do this.

I poked around Rubyforge and found nothing useful. I am aware of  
Tmail, but I’m not sure it solves this problem either. Basically,  
I need a ruby version of formail.

If there is a “standard” email handling package, I’d take a look  
and see about making it do what I want. At this point all the  
email handling packages seem like abandonware…

\_ Booker C. Bense

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Booker\_Bense](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@Booker\_Bense](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Booker_Bense)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2007, 10:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-library-for-dealing-with-mbox-files/113303/2 "2007-09-29T10:16:13Z")

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Booker Bense wrote:

> crashes when give such a file. ) I think I have a fix for
> 
> \_ Booker C. Bense

Did you ever find a solution? I am trying to parse Thunderbird email  
files, which are supposed to be standard mbox format, but RubyMail  
crashes routinely.  
Since the parser doesn’t track lines, it is often difficult to find the  
problem.

Not all headers have Content-length, but I haven’t worked out the  
pattern yet.

I don’t want to start from scratch as this format is clearly  
non-trivial. I have looked at some Perl modules and most of them appear  
to have the same problem of not handling unquoted "From " lines