reformime is a utility for reformatting MIME messages.
Generally, reformime expects to see an RFC 2045[1]
compliant message on standard input, except in few cases such as the
-m option.
If no options are given, reformime prints the MIME
structure of the message. The output consists of so-called "MIME
reference tags", one per line. For example:
This shows that the message contains two different MIME sections.
The first line of the MIME structure output will always contain
"1", which refers to the entire message. In this case it happens
to be a multipart/mixed message. "1.1" refers to the first section
of the multipart message, which happens to be a text/plain section.
"1.2" refers to the second section of the message, which happens
to be an application/octet-stream section.
If the message is not a MIME message, or it does not contain any
attachments, reformime prints only "1", that refers to the
entire message itself:
Here's the output from reformime when the first part of the
message was itself a multipart/alternative section:
Arbitrarily complex MIME constructs are possible.
-d
Parse a delivery status notification MIME message (RFC
1894[2]). reformime expects to see on standard input a MIME message
that consists of a delivery status notification, as defined by RFC 1894.
reformime reads the message and prints on standard output a list of
addresses and their corresponding delivery status, as specified in the
delivery status notification. Each line printed by reformime consists
of a delivery status, a space, and the address. reformime then
terminates with a 0 exit status. reformime produces no output and
terminates with an exit status of 1 if the standard input does not contain a
delivery status notification.
-D
Like the -d except that reformime lists the
address found in the Original-Recipient: header, if it exists.
-e
Extract the contents of the indicated MIME section, and
display it on standard output. The -s option is required when -e
is specified. If the specified section or sections use either the base64 or
quoted-printable encoding method, reformime automatically decodes it.
In this case you're better off redirecting the standard output into a
file.
-i
Display MIME information for each section.
reformime displays the contents of the Content-Type: header, any
encoding used, and the character set. reformime also displays the byte
offset in the message where each section starts and ends (and where the actual
contents of the section start, after skipping all the headers).
-m
Create a multipart/digest MIME message digest.
-r
Rewrite message, adding or standardizing RFC
2045[1] MIME headers.
-r7
Like -r but also convert 8bit-encoded MIME
sections to quoted-printable.
-r8
Like -r but also convert quoted-printable-encoded
MIME sections to 8bit.
-s section
Display MIME information for this section only.
section is a MIME specification tag. The
-s option is required
if
-e is also specified, and is optional with
-i.
Multiple sections may be specified by separating them with commas.
reformime processes each section using the other options that were
specified.
-x
Extract the contents of the indicated MIME section to a
file.
-X
Pipe the contents of the indicated MIME section to a
program.
The -x and -X options extract a specific MIME
section to a file or to a pipe to an external program. Use the -s
option to identify the MIME section to extract. If the -s option is
not specified, every MIME section in the message is extracted, one at a
time. If -s lists multiple sections, each section gets extracted
separately. quoted-printable and base64 encoding are automatically
decoded.
-x
Interactive extraction. reformime prints the MIME
content type of each section. Answer with 'y' or 'Y' to extract the MIME
section. Specify the filename at the next prompt. reformime prompts
with a default filename. reformime tries to choose the default filename
based on the MIME headers, if possible. If not, the default filename will be
attachment1.dat (if the -s option is not specified, the next filename will be
attachment2.dat, and so on).
-xPREFIX
Automatic extraction.
reformime automatically
extracts one or more MIME sections, and saves them to a file. The filename is
formed by taking
PREFIX, and appending the default filename to it. Note
that there's no space between "-x" and "PREFIX". For
example:
This command saves MIME sections as files-attachment1.dat, then
files-attachment2.dat, etc.
reformime tries to append the filename
specified in the MIME headers for each section, where possible.
reformime replaces all suspect characters with the underscore
character.
-X prog arg1 arg2 ...
The -X option must be the last option to
reformime. reformime runs an external program prog, and
pipes the contents of the MIME section to the program. reformime sets
the environment variable CONTENT_TYPE to the MIME content type. The
environment variable FILENAME gets set to the default filename of
reformime's liking. If the -s option is not specified, the
program runs once for every MIME section in the message. The external program,
prog must terminate with a zero exit status in order for
reformime to proceed to the next MIME section in the message (or the
next section specified by -s). In any case, if prog terminates
with a non-zero exit status, reformime terminates with the exit status
of 20 plus prog's exit status.
Note
reformime extracts every MIME section in the message unless
the -s option is specified. This includes even the text/plain MIME
content that usually precedes a binary attachment.
The -r option performs the following actions:
If there is no Mime-Version:, Content-Type:, or
Content-Transfer-Encoding: header, reformime adds one.
If the Content-Transfer-Encoding: header contains 8bit or raw, but
only seven-bit data is found, reformime changes the
Content-Transfer-Encoding header to 7bit.
-r7 does the same thing, but also converts 8bit-encoded
content that contains eight-bit characters to quoted-printable encoding.
-r8 does the same thing, but also converts
quoted-printable-encoded content to 8bit, except in some situations.
The -m option creates a MIME digest. reformime reads
a list of filenames on standard input. Each line read from standard input
contains the name of a file that is presumed to contain an RFC
2822-formatted message. reformime splices all files into a
multipart/digest MIME section, and writes it to standard output.
The following options do not read a message from standard input.
These options process MIME headers via the command line, and are designed to
be conveniently used by mail-handling scripts.
-h "header"
Decode a MIME-encoded "
header" and print
the decoded 8-bit content on standard output. The decoding gets carried out as
if the contents occurred in the “Subject” header. Example:
$ reformime -h '=?iso-8859-1?Q?H=F3la!?='
Hóla!
-H "header"
Like -h except that header is parsed as a
list of email addresses, like “From” or
“To”.
-o "text"
MIME-encode "text", and print the
results on standard output.
-O "text"
Like the -o option, except that text is a
structured header with RFC 2822 addresses.
-c "charset"
Use charset as the character set setting, by the
-h, -H, -o and -O options.
-u
This “undocumented” option reads a MIME
message on standard input, and converts its contents to an UTF-8-encoded
character stream, which is written to standard output.
The standard output receives a concatenated amalgam of the headers
and “text” MIME object data. It is meant to be used as part of
a generic search function. This option decodes various kinds of header MIME
encoding, the quoted-printable and base64 transfer encodings of
“text” MIME objects.