Script to extract email addresses from a file?

**Speedlock** · 16th January 2004

In a nutshell, I have a 50Mb details.oab file (from an Exchange server) that I need to extract all the email addresses from and place in a .txt or .csv file.

I was thinking that maybe a perl script would do the job but I don't have much perl experience so this kinda thing is beyond me.

I tried to do this a little while ago using a perl script I found via Google but it crapped out part way through so I guess it didn't like some of the odd characters in the .oab file.

Anyway, if there are any perl wizards out there who can help (or if you can think of another way to do this) then please let me know! :thumbs

--Speedlock

**TwoPlAnKs** · 16th January 2004

this sounds like somebody trying to harvest email addys to me..

SPAMMER

if you are not gonna do that then you would need some sort of string processing program, one that finds all words with an @ sign in them would more or less work.

need to split the file into words then chose the ones with @ signs(this is in no specific language, except pseudo code)

Code:

while (!end of file) {
  line=line of file
  while(position [wont let me do a smaller than sign :( ] lenth of line) {
       oldpos=position
        position=location of first space after position
        word=line from oldpos to position
         if ("@" isin word) {
             write word to a file
         }
    }
}

if you convert all that into the language of your choice then it would work fine

you woudl want to tidy up the word finding bit cos it is a tad messy atm, would leave spaces all over the place, plus there might be words with @ in them that are not really email addys

also addys might not be separated by a space, mabye make it detect all characters that are not allowed in email addys as being spaces

a bit tricky in some ways

TwoSheds