Regular expression to parse Final-Recipient email header

Question

I have to get any text between:

Final-Recipient: RFC822; !HERE! Action

I need !HERE! from this example. There could be any string.

I tried something like:

$Pattern = '/Final-Recipient: RFC822; (.*) Action/';

But it doesn't work.

upd

Here is the string I'm trying to parse: http://dpaste.com/187638/

How do you define the end of !HERE!? Is it always in exclamation marks? — Oskar Kjellin, Apr 25 '10 at 19:44
Hm, the slash is needed by regular expressions. The original text is: Final-Recipient: RFC822; ... Action — Max Frai, Apr 25 '10 at 19:49
Why doesn't that work? The string you linked to works fine with that code. Can you show the script you're using? — hookedonwinter, Apr 25 '10 at 19:54

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 25 '10 at 19:51

3

Since you said "any string" which may contain spaces, the closest approximate would be

$Pattern = '/Final-Recipient: RFC822; (.*?) Action/s';
#                                        ^         ^
# lazy match instead of greedy match ----'         |
#                    allow . to match newline -----'

Of course it won't match "Final-Recipient: RFC822; Action Action".

answered Apr 25 '10 at 19:51

kennytm

510,854
105
1,084
1,005

Look update, please. This regexp does'nt work for given text. – Max Frai Apr 25 '10 at 19:52

Mark Byers · Accepted Answer · 2010-04-25T20:04:49.163

Your pattern works fine for me:

$i = 'This is a MIME-encapsulated message --o3ONXoEH01blah3:35:33 +0400 (MSD) Final-Recipient: RFC822; !HERE! Action: failed Status: 4.4.7 Lblahru> From: *
@*.ru';    
$pattern = '/Final-Recipient: RFC822; (.*) Action/';
$matches = Array();
preg_match($pattern, $i, $matches);
print_r($matches);

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => Final-Recipient: RFC822; !HERE! Action
    [1] => !HERE!
)

Note also that your pattern will fail if the "any text" contains new lines. Use the DOTALL modifier /.../s to allow the dot to also match new lines. Also note that if the text " Action" appears elsewhere in the message it will cause your regular expression to fail. Matching dot is dangerous. Try to find a more specific pattern if possible.

To tell the truth, there could be only email addresses. Any newlines. — Max Frai, Apr 25 '10 at 19:55

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 15 '19 at 07:27

1

$Pattern = '/Final-Recipient:[^;]+[;|<|\s]+([^\s|^<|^>]+)/i';

The following expression turned out to be the best for my problems, because sometimes there are lines of the following kind:

Final-Recipient: LOCAL;<example@rambler.ru>

answered Aug 15 '19 at 07:27

Alexander Shatalov

11
1

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Oct 07 '21 at 06:26

a bit late....

but has been asked in terms of how to solve a problem that is not quite his requirements Op perhaps has joined multiple lines onto one line?(imho).

This might help others....

I'm assuming that op is trying to parse the Final-Recipient header field of a delivery status notification.

The spec for the Final-Recipient field can be seen here: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3464#page-15

If the problem is broken down, op can pull the final recipient field as a single field (Final recipient followed by a char/blank line on the next line.

e.g.

Original-recipient: rfc822;some-email-that-does-not-exist@gmail.com
Final-recipient: rfc822;some-email-that-does-not-exist@gmail.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.1 (Remote SMTP server has rejected address)

Final recipient is followed by the start of the next field, Action which has A on the next line. ie not followed by a space or blank line.

then all he has to do is split the line on ; and take the second part

ie

String[] twoparts = "Final-recipient: rfc822;some-email-that-does-not-exist@gmail.com".split(";",2) // 2 here means (2-1) = 1 match
String email = twoparts[1]

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 25 '10 at 20:32

I am going to suggest a method that does not use them, which requires extra busywork.

<?php
$message = 'This is a MIME-encapsulated message --o3ONXoEH016763.1272152184/zvm19.host.ru The original message was received at Fri, 23 Apr 2010 03:35:33 +0400 (MSD) from roller@localhost ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- "Flucker" ----- Transcript of session follows ----- 451 grl.unibel.by: Name server timeout Message could not be delivered for 2 days Message will be deleted from queue --o3ONXoEH016763.1272152184/*.host.ru Content-Type: message/delivery-status Reporting-MTA: dns; zvm19.host.ru Arrival-Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 03:35:33 +0400 (MSD) Final-Recipient: RFC822; !HERE! Action: failed Status: 4.4.7 Last-Attempt-Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2010 03:36:24 +0400 (MSD) --o3ONXoEH016763.1272152184/zvm19.host.ru Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-Path: Received: (from *@localhost) by *.host.ru (8.13.8/Zenon/Postman) id o3MNZX5h059932; Fri, 23 Apr 2010 03:35:33 +0400 (MSD) (envelope-from *@roller.ru) Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 03:35:33 +0400 (MSD) Message-Id: <201004222335.o3MNZX5h059932@*.host.ru> From: *
@*.ru';
$left_delimiter = 'Final-Recipient: RFC822; ';
$right_delimiter = ' Action';
$left_delimiter_pos = strrpos($message, $left_delimiter);
$right_delimiter_pos = strpos($message, $right_delimiter);
$desired_message_fragment = '';
if ($left_delimiter_pos !== false && $right_delimiter_pos !== false) {
    $fragment_start = $left_delimiter_pos + strlen($left_delimiter);
    $fragment_length = $right_delimiter_pos - $fragment_start;
    $desired_message_fragment = substr(
        $message, $fragment_start, $fragment_length
    );
}
var_dump($desired_message_fragment);

Regular expression to parse Final-Recipient email header

5 Answers5

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