mbox-purge - perform batch deletion of mail messages from mbox files
mbox-purge [--copy-to file] [--debug] [--help] [--newline s] [--newline-native] [--no] [-n] [--quiet] [--verbose] [--version] [--before date-time] [--before-or-at date-time] [--after date-time] [--after-or-at date-time] [--pattern pat] [--head-pattern pat] [--body-pattern pat] [--eval code] [--head-eval code] file...
mbox-purge performs batch deletion of email messages from mbox format files based on rules you specify. It uses file.lock-style locking (using procmail's lockfile under the hood). Because of this you have to have write permission in the directory in which the file being processed is stored.
The file to be processed can be in mbox, mboxrd, mboxcl, mboxcl2 or buggy Elm mboxcl2 format. The data written will always be in mboxrd format. See http://www.qmail.org/qmail-manual-html/man5/mbox.html for an explanation of these terms.
Append a copy of each deleted message to file.
Turn debugging on.
Show the help and die.
Use s as the line terminator rather than guessing based on the first line of each file.
Use this platform's native line terminator rather than guessing based on the first line of each file.
Don't actually modify any files, just go through the motions.
Suppress informational messages.
Output additional informational messages.
Show the version and exit.
If multiple rules are given they all have to match for a message to be purged.
Purge messages which were delivered in the specified period. The date/time parsing is flexible, as provided by Date::Parse. I usually use YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. If you leave off the time it defaults to 00:00:00.
Purge messages which match pat. The pattern is run against the message after its mbox-style encoding has been unescaped. The match uses Perl's //m flag.
Purge messages which match pat. The pattern is run against the message after its mbox-style encoding has been unescaped. The match uses Perl's //m flag.
Additionally, the headers have line continuations undone (newline followed by whitespace is replaced with a single space) before the match.
Purge messages whose bodies match pat. The pattern is run against the message after its mbox-style encoding has been unescaped. The match uses Perl's //m flag.
Evaluate code and purge the message if it returns true. code is compiled as the body of a subroutine. The subroutine receives references to the head, body and full text of the message as its arguments. The head argument has had continuation lines undone, and the body in both of the second arguments has had its mbox encoding unescaped. See also CONVENIENCE SUBS.
Like --eval but the only arg passed to the code is a reference to the message header. Use this if you don't need the message body, to avoid having to put it in memory.
Here are some subs you can use from code passed in via -eval:
Return the epoch time() when the message was delivered, as
read from the From_ line.
Return the envelope sender, as read from the From_ line.
Return the name of the file being processed.
Return the data part of all the header lines whose field names match header_pattern. Eg,
my @recv = header_all 'Received';
These are like header_all, but they only return the first or last matching header.
Append the ref-to-string to the mbox-format file, doing appropriate escaping and locking. Typically ref-to-string will be $_[2].
True if the message has been marked as expunged by Mozilla. Such messages are effectively deleted, but haven't been removed from the mailbox file yet.
Return the index of this message in the current file (starts at 1).
Return the epoch time() which corresponds to str, or undef.
# Delete messages older than the given date from all your folders.
mbox-purge --before 2000-05-01 ~/Mail/*
# Delete messages from April 2000.
mbox-purge --after-or-at 2000-04-01 --before 2000-05-01 file
# Move messages delivered in the year 2000 from the listed files
# into a single file.
mbox-purge --after-or-at 2000-01-01 --before 2001-01-01 \
--copy-to 2000.mbox file1 file2 file3
# Delete a chain letter from all user's mailboxes.
mbox-purge \
--head-pattern '^Subject: (Re: )?GOOD LUCK TOTEM( \(fwd\))?$' \
/var/spool/mail/*
# Perform equivalent of Mozilla folder compaction.
mbox-purge --eval mozilla_expunged file
# Delete messages larger than 1M.
mbox-purge --eval 'length ${ $_[2] } > 1_000_000' file
# Delete messages older than 6 months from all your folders.
mbox-purge --eval 'time - delivery_time > 60*60*24 * 31 * 6' ~/Mail/*
# Same, but use the Date: field's date rather than the delivery date.
mbox-purge --eval 'time - parse_date(header_first "Date")
> 60*60*24 * 31 * 6' ~/Mail/*
# Move messages older than 6 months into by-year archive folders, keeping
# separate archives for each source folder. Eg, for ~/Mail/sent you
# get ~/Mail/sent.2000, ~/Mail/sent.2001, etc.
find ~/Mail ! -name '*.[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]' ! -name '.*' -type f \
-print0 | xargs -0r mbox-purge \
--eval '
return 0 if time - delivery_time() < 60*60*24 * 31 * 6;
require POSIX;
my $year = POSIX::strftime("%Y", localtime delivery_time);
mbox_append file_name . ".$year", $_[2];
1'
You can't delete from your mail spool on a system which doesn't have a world-writable spool directory if you're a regular user, both because mbox-purge doesn't know to special-case lockfile's invocation for that and because it creates the temporary file in the same directory as the file it is processing.
$Log: mbox-purge,v $ Revision 1.23 2007-04-11 12:32:48-04 roderick Typo.
Revision 1.22 2007-04-06 16:19:54-04 roderick Add --copy-to, --before-or-at, --after-or-at.
Add convenience subs: mbox_append(), file_name(), msg_num().
Touch lock files periodically so other processes don't think they're stale.
Revision 1.21 2006-11-22 14:13:00-05 roderick Support differing line terminators ($/); guess the right value on a file-by-file basis by default. Add --newline, --newline-native to override this.
Avoid holding a whole message body in memory when possible by using the (new) callback-enabled version of mbox_read_body(). Add --head-eval to make it possible in more cases.
Add -n as alias for --no.
Add mozilla_expunged() convenience sub.
Revision 1.20 2006-10-17 10:07:20-04 roderick Use chompexpr_fileline.
Revision 1.19 2006-09-08 09:31:39-04 roderick Also check the file's size when detecting modifications.
When you modify a mailbox remove a .msf file (Mozilla index) if present.
Revision 1.18 2005-03-01 11:57:15-05 roderick Oops, set $File_name correctly.
Revision 1.17 2004-09-02 10:49:57-04 roderick Important changes:
Use the delivery date rather than the Date: header for --before and
--after.
Add and prefer --switch to -switch, but still allow the latter for
old switches.
Add convenience subs: delivery_time(), envelope_sender(), header_all(),
header_first(), header_last().
Add --help, --no, --quiet, --verbose, --version.
Less important:
If no messages were purged from a file, leave it as is rather than
replacing it with the new (identical) copy.
Treat a parsed date of -1 as undef.
Add %Message_info, $File_name, $Msg_num.
Improve the usage message.
For --eval, turn off strict vars, and don't let the user get at my
lexicals.
Don't trap signals which were ignored.
Roderick Schertler <roderick@argon.org>