Re: MUAs and timestamps, was Re: how to grep without changing timestamps?
On Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 07:35:06PM -0500, Chris Gray wrote:
| >>>>> D-Man writes:
|
| d> | How is mutt (or any other MUA) meant to do it then?
| d> |
|
| d> By checking the file itself for new messages, rather than
| d> relying on the timestamp. Some MUA's handle new messages in
| d> folders better. (ie, you can open up the mailbox, not read
| d> anything, and it still says new -- mutt doesn't)
|
| Only now, when the user has 1e6 messages in his inbox because he
| never deletes any, he opens mutt and then goes on his coffee break and
| gets back before mutt is done scanning the messages. Also, where is
Yeah, it's not perfect. As I said in my quoted paragraph below the
current system probably solves a lot of developer headaches with such
situations. Who's going to save 1e6 messages anyways? Even if you
do, are you even going to remember any but the last dozen or so? (but
I'm not going to argue the point so don't bother answering the q's :-))
| mutt supposed to keep the information about which messages were
| previously in the folder?
|
In the folder itself. There is a header that has this info, just
open it in vim or something. I did some checking just now and
couldn't find it in my mutt mbox. I have seen it before. I think
Netscape messenger sets such a header. Something like X-Status. The
flags for the header that I am aware of are "R" "O" and "N". Have you
ever noticed how even if mutt doesn't list the folder as new in the
folder view it still reports the messages properly once the folder is
opened?
| d> All-in-all though it's not such a bad system (for mutt). It
| d> probably solves a lot of headaches with locks and other
| d> processes trying to write to the mbox as mutt reads to
| d> determine if something is new or not.
|
| What is "it" here? Futzing around scanning the mailbox or doing a
| stat()? I hope you mean the latter.
|
Checking the timestamp. (I guess that's what stat() does, I haven't
had a need to use stat() in any progs yet)
| Incidentally, it appears from the stat(2) man page that a solution
| to this problem might be unmounting, mounting with the option
| "noatime", and then remounting without that option. It also appears
| that 'touch' can change the access time of the file with the -a flag.
| But I think I'm coming in on the end of this thread and that might
I just joined the thread when the subject changed. I did know that
touch will set the last (modfied/accessed) time to now, and if the
file DNE it will create it.
| have already been suggested. Also, if you know that your mailbox has
| new mail, you can
If I know it has new mail, then I already know. The goal is to
have the MUA tell me instead. ;-)
-D
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