Mailbox flattening messages

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:35:44 +1200

The mailbox.py code does this to dump a message (e.g. when adding to a Maildir file):

def _dump_message(self, message, target, mangle_from_=False):
 # Most files are opened in binary mode to allow predictable seeking.
 # To get native line endings on disk, the user-friendly \n line endings
 # used in strings and by email.Message are translated here.
 """Dump message contents to target file."""
 if isinstance(message, email.Message.Message):
 buffer = StringIO.StringIO()
 gen = email.Generator.Generator(buffer, mangle_from_, 0)
 gen.flatten(message)
 buffer.seek(0)
 target.write(buffer.read().replace('\n', os.linesep))
 elif isinstance(message, str):
 if mangle_from_:
 message = message.replace('\nFrom ', '\n>From ')
 message = message.replace('\n', os.linesep)
 target.write(message)

(There’s a bit more that deals with other types of message). Unfortunately, with some messages containing Unicode characters, this breaks with a UnicodeDecodeError:

Unicodedecodeerror on Tony Andrew Meyer

Mailbox flattening messages