chewmail - mail archiver

chewmail [OPTIONS] <MAILBOX> ...

chewmail is a program for archiving mail. It is inspired by the by the Python-based archivemail, but with more useful semantics. All mail is archived to the mailbox specified with the --output-box switch, in mbox format. It can read mailboxes in mbox, Maildir and MH formats.

Internally, chewmail uses Mail::Box, so it support file names and URLs supported by that module.

-o mailbox-format, --output-box=mailbox-format

The mailbox to archive messages to. The mailbox is run through the Date::Format module, so it supports all it's conversion specifiers. The date and time is relative to the messages timestamp, or the current time if the timestamp is impossible to determine. A sample of the conversion specifiers follows:

    %%      PERCENT
    %b      month abbr
    %B      month
    %d      numeric day of the month, with leading zeros (eg 01..31)
    %e      numeric day of the month, without leading zeros (eg 1..31)
    %D      MM/DD/YY
    %G      GPS week number (weeks since January 6, 1980)
    %h      month abbr
    %H      hour, 24 hour clock, leading 0's)
    %I      hour, 12 hour clock, leading 0's)
    %j      day of the year
    %k      hour
    %l      hour, 12 hour clock
    %L      month number, starting with 1
    %m      month number, starting with 01
    %n      NEWLINE
    %o      ornate day of month -- "1st", "2nd", "25th", etc.
    %t      TAB
    %U      week number, Sunday as first day of week
    %w      day of the week, numerically, Sunday == 0
    %W      week number, Monday as first day of week
    %x      date format: 11/19/94
    %y      year (2 digits)
    %Y      year (4 digits)

-d days-old, --days=days-old

Only archive messages older than than this many days.

-D date, --date=date

Only archive messages old than this date. The date can be any date understood by Perl's Date::Parse module.

-R, --only-read

Only archive messages that are marked seen or read.

--delete-immediately

Synchonize the mailboxes after every message is moved. This will be substantially slower but may provide better recovery for some mailbox formats in the event of a crash.

--preserve-timestamp

Preserve the atime and mtime of the input mailbox. This only affects file-based mailboxes, such as mbox.

-n, --dry-run

Go through all the motions of archiving the mail, but don't actually change any mailboxes.

-v, --verbose

Output more informational messages. Use multiple times for more verbosity.

-q, --quiet

Don't output any messages other than error messages.

-V, --version

Print the version number then exit.

-h, --help

Print usage information then exit.

Archive two day old messages in inbox to inbox-old:

  chewmail --days 2 -o inbox-old inbox

Archive read messages to a mailbox named the year-month of the message:

  chewmail --read-only -o %Y-%m inbox

archivemail(1), Date::Parse, Date::Format, Mail::Box

Eric Dorland <eric@kuroneko.ca>