# generating format-patch options from an e-mail

1 messages from 2012-12-26 to 2012-12-26. Participants: Simon Oosthoek.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/32460

## Simon Oosthoek, 2012-12-26 20:28

Subject: generating format-patch options from an e-mail
Message-ID: <20121226202830.GA29813@simaj.xs4all.nl>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20121226202830.GA29813%40simaj.xs4all.nl

```
Hi all

I've been very frustrated by the process to setup a commandline for git format-patch, to include everyone in the cc list and reply to the right message-id.

In my frustration I created a perl script to generate the options from a saved e-mail, I realise that it may be non-general and perhaps it could be written better using a module which understands e-mails, but well, it worked for me ;-)

Anyway, I could imagine this as optional flag of git format-patch, so you could say:
$ git format-patch -s --in-reply-to-email <mboxfile> a7fe7de8

But I'll save that as an exercise for the reader (or the future)

Cheers

Simon

PS, now with the script


#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;

our @to;
our @cc;
our @id;
our $emptyline=0;

if (defined $ARGV[0] and -f $ARGV[0]) {
	open (MAIL, "<$ARGV[0]") or die "cannot open $ARGV[0]\n";
	#while (my $line=<MAIL> && ($emptyline == 0) ) {
	while (my $line=<MAIL> ) {
			chomp $line;
			my $header="";
			my $content="";
		
			if ($line =~ /^(.*?):.*[ ,<](.*?@.*?)[>, ]/ ||
					$line =~ /^(.*ID?):.*[ ,<](.*?)[>, ]/) {
					$header=$1;
					$content=$2;
					if ($header eq "From") {
							push(@to, $content);
					} if ($header eq "To") {
							push(@cc, $content);
					} elsif ($header eq "Cc") {
							$line =~ /:(.*)$/;
							my @ccs=split(/,/, $1);
							foreach my $addr (@ccs) {
									if ($addr =~ /<(.*)>/) {
											push(@cc, $1);
									} else {
											push(@cc, $addr);
									}
							}
					} elsif ($header eq "Message-ID") {
							push(@id, $content);
					}
			}
			$emptyline++ if (length($line) == 0);

	}
	close (MAIL);
}


foreach my $item (@to) {
		print " --to \"$item\"";
}
foreach my $item (@cc) {
		print " --cc \"$item\"";
}
foreach my $item (@id) {
		print " --in-reply-to \"$item\"";
}

```