MUNPACK(1)

💖 MUNPACK(1) — like, the whole vibe 💖

okay bestie, welcome to munpack from the General Commands Manual section — she's the one who unpacks your messages when they show up in MIME or split-uuencode format. sit down, get comfy, we're doing this 🫶

---

✨ NAME ✨

munpack — unpack messages in MIME or split-uuencode format 💅

---

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

munpack [ -f ] [ -q ] [ -t ] [ -r character ] [ -C directory ] [ filename ... ]

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so the munpack program reads each RFC-822 message filename and writes all the non-text MIME parts or split-uuencoded files out as files. no filename argument? no problem, she just reads from standard input. iconic behavior honestly.

if the message suggests a file name for the imbedded part, that name gets cleaned of potential problem characters and then used for the output file. and if the suggested filename has subdirectories in it? those get created as necessary, because she's thorough like that ✨

if the message does not suggest a file name, the names "part1", "part2", etc are used in sequence. one, two, three, in order, no skipping 💫

and if the imbedded part was preceded with textual information, that info also gets written to a file. the file is named the same as the imbedded part, except any filename extension gets replaced with .desc. cute, right? 🎀

---

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -f — Force overwriting of existing files. if a message suggests a file name of an existing file, that file gets overwritten. without this flag, munpack appends .1, .2, etc to find a nonexistent file instead. so like, -f is the "we don't do backups here" energy 🔥
• -q — Be quiet. suppresses messages about saving partial messages and about messages with no interesting information. she's not ignoring you, she's just ✨ peaceful ✨
• -t — Also write the text MIME parts of multipart messages as files. by default, text parts that do not have a filename parameter do not get unpacked. and heads up: this option effectively disables the .desc file feature for MIME messages. so pick your fighter, bestie 😭
• -r character — if the suggested filename contains invalid characters, they get replaced with this character. the default replacement character is "X".
• -C directory — change the current directory to directory before reading any files. this is useful when invoking munpack from a mail or news reader. very "set the stage first" of her 👑

---

🌈 DECODING MIME 🌈

to decode a MIME message, first save it to a text file. if possible, save it with all headers included. here's the tea: munpack can decode some MIME files when the headers are missing or incomplete, but other files she literally cannot decode without having the information in the headers. in general, messages which have a statement at the beginning that they are in MIME format can be decoded without the headers. messages which have been split into multiple parts generally require all headers in order to be reassembled and decoded. no cap.

some LAN-based mail systems and some mail providers (including America Online, as of the writing of this document) place the mail headers at the bottom of the message instead of at the top of the message. if you're having problems decoding a MIME message on such a system, you need to convert the mail back into the standard format by removing the system's nonstandard headers and moving the standard Internet headers to the top of the message (separated from the message body with a blank line). yeah, it's giving labor. do it anyway 💀

there must be exactly one message per file. munpack cannot deal with multiple messages in a single file — to decode things correctly she must know when one message ends and the next one begins. boundaries matter, bestie 🫶

to decode a message, run the command:

munpack file

where "file" is the name of the file containing the message. more than one filename may be specified, and munpack will try to decode the message in each file. for more information on ways to run munpack, see the section "OPTIONS" above. iykyk 💖

---

🧚 ENVIRONMENT 🧚

• TMPDIR — Directory to store temporary files. Default is /tmp.

---

🍓 FILES 🍓

• $TMPDIR/m-prts-$USER/ — Directory used to store partial messages awaiting reassembly. it's the little waiting room where your half-messages chill until their friends show up 💜

---

👑 REPORTING BUGS 👑

send all bug reports to mpack-bugs@andrew.cmu.edu. she wants to hear it, fr fr — tell her everything 🎀

---

and that's the whole page, bestie! this was MUNPACK(1) from the General Commands Manual, brought to you with all the love in the world. go unpack something slay ✨🦋💖