Does anyone know of existing code for reading a mork file (Thunderbird address book)?

Question

I need to read the Thunderbird address book on the fly. It is stored in the Mork file format. Not a nice file format to read. I found a 1999 article explaining the file format. I would really like to know if someone has already gone through this process, and can make the code available. I found mork.pl by Jamie Zawinski (he worked on Netscape Navigator), but I was hoping for a .NET solution.

I hope StackOverflow comes to the rescue because it is just a waste of time to write something to read this file format when it will be so simple.

I like the comments that Jamie put in the perl script . Here is my favorite part:

#   Let me make it clear that McCusker is a complete barking lunatic.
#   This is just about the stupidest file format I've ever seen.

Answer 1

The Beagle search engine contained code to parse Mork files. This is not the most efficient memory solution, but it works and can be a useful starting point. Here is the link to the file:

http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/beagle/tags/BEAGLE_0_2_18/Util/Mork.cs?view=markup

(These days Beagle no longer uses this parser, we took a simpler (and more supported) way to write the Thunderbird extension, which simply sent the data to Beagle itself. Does it have a drawback not to work while Thunderbird is closed, but has the advantage of that you don’t cauterize the desire to bash your head with the nearest blunt tool.)