Skip to content

gh-61707: Clarify that Header.__str__() does not decode RFC 2047 encoded words #161268

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
ArtyomSimitian wants to merge 3 commits into
base: main
Choose a base branch
from
Open

gh-61707: Clarify that Header.__str__() does not decode RFC 2047 encoded words #161268

Show file tree
Hide file tree
Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
3 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
3c526b4
gh-61707: Clarify that Header.__str__() does not decode RFC 2047 enco…
ArtyomSimitian Nov 3, 2026
f3e7e86
Mention email.policy.default as the modern alternative
ArtyomSimitian Nov 3, 2026
bb7f8a3
Fix indentation and trailing whitespace
ArtyomSimitian Nov 3, 2026
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
13 changes: 13 additions & 0 deletions Doc/library/email.header.rst
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -155,6 +155,19 @@ Here is the :class:`Header` class description:
charset of ``'unknown-8bit'`` are decoded as ASCII using the ``'replace'``
error handler.

This does not decode :rfc:`2047` encoded words that appear in the header
value itself. For example,
``str(Header('=?utf-8?q?Caf=C3=A9?='))`` returns the string unchanged.
To decode a raw header string, use :func:`decode_header` and
:func:`make_header`::

>>> from email.header import decode_header, make_header
>>> str(make_header(decode_header('=?utf-8?q?Caf=C3=A9?=')))
'Café'

Alternatively, messages parsed with the :data:`email.policy.default`
policy decode their headers automatically.

.. versionchanged:: 3.2
Added handling for the ``'unknown-8bit'`` charset.

Expand Down
3 changes: 3 additions & 0 deletions Misc/NEWS.d/next/Documentation/2026-11-03-20-00-00.gh-issue-61707.Hd5rSt.rst
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
Clarify that :meth:`email.header.Header.__str__` does not decode :rfc:`2047`
encoded words, and point to :func:`email.header.decode_header` and
:func:`email.header.make_header` for decoding raw header strings.
Loading