If been wanting to save e-mail messages to a filoe, and then manipulate the
file with a program like awk in order to be able to import them into a
database.

One of the problems is that when you save messages to a file, all the headers
are saved, so I'm hoping that awk can manipulate the file to remove all but
the most significant ones, and someone has given me a sample script that seems
to do that quite well.

But I've also been getting and increasing number of messages that are hard to
read, and to save in readable form:

These ones are hard to read and save:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

These are not quite as hard to read or save, but still cause problems:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

These ones are easy to read and save:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Can anyone suggest a way of making it easier to read and save messages in
various formats?

--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk