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decomposemail(1)	    General Commands Manual	      decomposemail(1)

NAME
       decomposemail - decompose mailboxes into	their component	email messages

SYNOPSIS
       decomposemail [ -hrv ] [	-c num ] [ -l num ] [ -s num ] [ mbox... ]

DESCRIPTION
       decomposemail  disassembles  email  mailboxes into their	component mes-
       sages, storing each message in a	separate serialized file.  These  mes-
       sage files can then be reassembled into new mailboxes sorted by date by
       a program such as recomposemail(1), or via standard UNIX	commands.

OPTIONS
       The following options are supported:

       -c	 Split the mailbox into	num-message chunks, does not sort.

       -h	 Help, just print an informational message, and	exit.

       -l	 Limit,	 stop  processing  after  num messages,	does not count
		 messages skipped with -s.

       -r	 Recompose, ignored with -c.  The  new	mailbox	 file  created
		 will have the suffix ".sort".

       -s	 Skip the first	num messages.

       -v	 Verbose, provide more feedback.

OPERANDS
       The following operands are supported:

       mbox	 The  name  (with  optional path) of a standard	Internet style
		 mailbox file.	"-" can	be used	for  stdin  (standard  input),
		 which is also the default if no mbox argument is given.

USAGE
       decomposemail is	used to	break up standard Internet style mailbox files
       into  serialized	 files,	 each holding one email	message.  This is most
       useful when used	with other programs such as recomposemail(1) or	 sort-
       mail(1)	to reassemble the message files	into new mailboxes.  The seri-
       alization used provides for easy	ordering by date/time.	 All  work  is
       done in the current directory.

       With  -r,  a quick and dirty reassembly - sorted	by date/time - is per-
       formed with no cleanup.

       When mbox arguments are specified that have suffixes ".Z" or ".gz"  in-
       dicating	 that  the  files  are	compressed  with either	compress(1) or
       gzip(1),	these files will be uncompressed as they are read in.

EXAMPLES
       Break out the messages in the mailbox "zippy" into  individual  serial-
       ized files:

	    decomposemail zippy

       Break  out the messages in the mailboxes	"../listA" and "../listB" into
       individual serialized files, then recombine them	into two new mailboxes
       "listA.sort" and	"listB.sort", each sorted by date/time.	 There will be
       no cleanup of the message files.	 Per  message  progress	 will  be  re-
       ported:

	    decomposemail -rv ../listA ../listB

       Break  out  messages 201	through	300 in the mailbox "outbox" into indi-
       vidual serialized files:

	    decomposemail -s 200 -l 100	outbox

       Break out messages from the standard input, and chunk them into serial-
       ized mailboxes each holding 50 messages.	 The new mailboxes  will  each
       have the	base name "stdin":

	    cat	mbox.* | decomposemail -c 50

FILES
       mbox.YYYYMMDD.hhmmss.nnnnn
		     Serialized	files created for each individual message in a
		     mailbox, where "mbox" is the name of the mailbox, "YYYYM-
		     MDD"  is  the year, month,	and day, "hhmmss" is the hour,
		     minute, and second,  and  "nnnnn"	is  a  serial  number.
		     These will	be created in the current directory.

       mbox-nnnnn    Serialized	 files	created	for each chunk of num messages
		     when the -c flag is specified, where "nnnnn" is a	serial
		     number  starting  with "00001".  These will be created in
		     the current directory.

DIAGNOSTICS
       Returns 0 if no problems	encountered.
       Returns non-zero	for any	errors encountered.

BUGS
       decomposemail is	slow.

       Data at the beginning of	a mailbox that does not	appear to be  part  of
       an email	message	will be	silently discarded.

       decomposemail looks for and uses	the GNU	version	of awk(1) where	it can
       find it,	but will default to whatever version is	available.  Since most
       non-GNU versions	have input line	length limitations, decomposemail will
       fold input lines	that are too long when these other versions are	used.

       With  -r, a simplistic algorithm	is used	to recombine the messages into
       a new mailbox, and may crash on very large  numbers  of	messages.   If
       this happens, use recomposemail(1).

SEE ALSO
       compress(1), gzip(1), recomposemail(1), sh(1), sortmail(1),
       "Toolman:  Sorting and Archiving	Email",	;login:	magazine (USENIX Asso-
       ciation), August	1998.

AUTHOR
       sortmail	 was  written  by Daniel E. Singer (a.k.a. Toolman) at the De-
       partment	of Computer Science, Duke University.

Toolman				 09 June 1998		      decomposemail(1)

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