Text::E...con::MSN(3)

💖 Text::Emoticon::MSN — the emoticon filter of MSN Messenger 💖

okay so bestie, imagine this: it's the year of our lord whenever, you're typing ;-) like a little goofball, and you want that to become an actual picture. That's the whole gig. This is Text::Emoticon::MSN, and it's here to serve. 🎀

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

use Text::Emoticon::MSN;

my $emoticon = Text::Emoticon::MSN->new(
    imgbase => "http://example.com/emo",
);

my $text = "Yet Another Perl Hacker ;-)";
print $emoticon->filter($text);

# it prints
# Yet Another Perl Hacker <img src="http://example.com/emo/regular_smile.gif" />

like. the way that ;-) just became an image. no cap, it's giving transformation. 💅

---

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Text::Emoticon::MSN is a text filter that replaces text emoticons like :-), ;-P, etc. to the icons of MSN Messenger, detailed in http://messenger.msn.com/Resource/Emoticons.aspx

that's it. that's the mission. tiny text faces in, real icons out. iconic behavior, honestly. ✨

---

💜 METHODS 💜

new

$emoticon = Text::Emoticon::MSN->new(
    imgbase => "http://yourhost.example.com/images/emoticons",
    xhtml   => 1,
    class   => "emoticon",
);

Constructs new Text::Emoticon::MSN object. It accepts two options:

ok so the docs say "two options" and then hand you four. we love an unbothered queen. anyway, here they all are 🫶

• imgbase — Base URL where icon gif files are located. It defaults to "http://messenger.msn.com/Resource/emoticons" (the MSN site) but I don't recommend that, as there's a possibility MSN will ban your site.

bestie PLEASE host your own gifs. getting banned by MSN is not the main character moment you think it is 😭

• xhtml — Whether it uses XHTML style img tags. It defaults to 1.
• class — CSS class used in "img" tags. It defaults to nothing.

$emoticon = Text::Emoticon::MSN->new(class => "emo");

will print:

<img src="blah.gif" class="emo" />

• strict — Whether it will disable smileys with space in them. defaults to 0.

---

filter

$filtered_text = $emoticon->filter($text);

Filters emoticons in text and returns "img" tagged text (HTML).

you give it your little string, it gives you back HTML with img tags. glow up complete. 🌈

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🦋 TODO 🦋

• Handling original emoticons. (Patches welcome)
• Common API for other Emoticons like Yahoo! (maybe Text::Emoticons)

"Patches welcome" is the group chat equivalent of "we should totally hang out sometime". manifesting it fr fr 🙈

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Tatsuhiko Miyagawa <miyagawa@bulknews.net>

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

http://messenger.msn.com/Resource/Emoticons.aspx

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one shipped as perl v5.42.0, dated 2025-07-25, and the man page answers to the name Text::E...con::MSN(3) (the terminal cut her off mid-name, she's dramatic like that 💀). mwah, go filter some smileys. 💖✨🎀