I have a single spool mbox file that was created with evolution, containing a selection of emails that I wish to print. My problem is that the emails are not placed into the mbox file chronologically. I would like to know the best way to place order the files from first to last using bash, perl or python. I would like to oder by received for files addressed to me, and sent for files sent by me. Would it perhaps be easier to use maildir files or such?
The emails currently exist in the format:
From x@blah.com Fri Aug 12 09:34:09 2005
Message-ID: <42FBEE81.9090701@blah.com>
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 09:34:09 +0900
From: me <x@blah.com>
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (Windows/20050716)
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: someone <someone@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: (no subject)
References: <BAY101-F9353854000A4758A7E2CCA9BD0@phx.gbl>
In-Reply-To: <BAY101-F9353854000A4758A7E2CCA9BD0@phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Status: RO
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 371
X-Evolution-Source: imap://x+blah.com@blah.com/
X-Evolution: 00000002-0010
Hey
the actual content of the email
someone wrote:
> lines of quotedtext
I am wondering if there is a way to use this information to easily reorganize the file, perhaps with perl or such.
This is how you could do it in python:
#!/usr/bin/python2.5
from email.utils import parsedate
import mailbox
def extract_date(email):
date = email.get('Date')
return parsedate(date)
the_mailbox = mailbox.mbox('/path/to/mbox')
sorted_mails = sorted(the_mailbox, key=extract_date)
the_mailbox.update(enumerate(sorted_mails))
the_mailbox.flush()