UnboundLocalError in email.message.Message.get_payload

Bug report

Bug description:

    html_body = part.get_payload(decode=True).decode()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.8/email/message.py", line 282, in get_payload
    return quopri.decodestring(bpayload)

CPython versions tested on:

CPython main branch

Operating systems tested on:

Linux

Linked PRs

@bitdancer

The error is here:

cpython/Lib/email/message.py

Lines 316 to 317 in 96905bd

    
           if cte == 'quoted-printable': 
        
               return quopri.decodestring(bpayload)

cc @bitdancer

hi, can i work on this?

Hello! I would like to work on it but did not work with CPython at all. Will it be a problem? If not where I should start with?

@skv0zsneg

Hi, @skv0zsneg and @makridenko! Thanks a lot for your interest.

@makridenko since you were first, you can surely work on this. Because it looks like that no one else has started yet.

@skv0zsneg we value new contributors, please, don't feel left out :) You can pick any other issue from the opened ones 🤝

@picnixz

Hey everyone!

Trying to reproduce this bug UnboundLocalError but it want falling.

What I'm doing in REPL:

>>> raw_email = """Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
... Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
... 
... Hey!"""
>>> from email import message_from_string
>>> msg = message_from_string(raw_email)
>>> msg.get_payload(decode=True).decode()
'Hey!'
>>> msg._headers
[('Content-Type', 'text/plain; charset="utf-8"'), ('Content-Transfer-Encoding', 'quoted-printable')]

As mentioned by @picnixz, the error must be on line 317. To get here I use email message with quoted-printable encoding and body message surely get into quopri.decodestring but (luckly?) it does not fall. Am I miss something?

OS: Linux (Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS)
Python: Python 3.15.0a0

The "bad" code path is only taken when payload is not a string, cte == 'quoted-printable' and decode is True. Considering there is

        if i is not None and not isinstance(self._payload, list):

We can't just use a list because if is_multipart() would return true and we would early exit. So we need to use a bytes payload with decode = True (I think).

gh-134759: fix `UnboundLocalError` in `email.message.Message.get_payl…

pythongh-134759: fix `UnboundLocalError` in `email.message.Message.ge…

[3.13] gh-134759: fix `UnboundLocalError` in `email.message.Message.g…

[3.14] gh-134759: fix `UnboundLocalError` in `email.message.Message.g…

pythongh-134759: fix `UnboundLocalError` in `email.message.Message.ge…

[3.14] pythongh-134759: fix `UnboundLocalError` in `email.message.Mes…

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`UnboundLocalError` in `email.message.Message.get_payload` #134759

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	if cte == 'quoted-printable':
	return quopri.decodestring(bpayload)

UnboundLocalError in email.message.Message.get_payload #134759

Description

Bug report

Bug description:

CPython versions tested on:

Operating systems tested on:

Linked PRs

Activity

picnixz commented on May 26, 2025

makridenko commented on May 27, 2025

skv0zsneg commented on May 27, 2025

sobolevn commented on May 27, 2025

skv0zsneg commented on Jun 27, 2025

picnixz commented on Jun 27, 2025

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`UnboundLocalError` in `email.message.Message.get_payload` #134759