ap - parse addresses 822-style

Ap is a program that parses addresses according to the ARPA Internet standard. It also understands many non-standard formats. It is useful for seeing how nmh will interpret an address.

The ap program treats each argument as one or more addresses, and prints those addresses out in the official 822-format. Hence, it is usually best to enclose each argument in double-quotes for the shell.

To override the output format used by ap, the -format string or -format file switches are used. This permits individual fields of the address to be extracted with ease. The string is simply a format string, and the file is simply a format file. See mh-format(5) for the details.

In addition to the standard escapes, ap also recognizes the following additional escape:

Escape	Returns	Description
error	string	A diagnostic if the parse failed

If the -normalize switch is given, ap will try to track down the official hostname of the address.

Here is the default format string used by ap:

%<{error}%{error}: %{text}%|%(putstr(proper{text}))%>

which says that if an error was detected, print the error, a `:', and the address in error. Otherwise, output the 822-proper format of the address.

^$HOME/.mhprofile~^The user profile
^/etc/nmh/mts.conf~^nmh mts configuration file

None

dp(8), Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages (RFC-822)

`-format' defaults as described above
`-normalize'
`-width' defaults to the width of the terminal

None

The argument to the -format switch must be interpreted as a single token by the shell that invokes ap. Therefore, one must usually place the argument to this switch inside double-quotes.