Re: maildir vs. mbox vs. mh ???

[Isaac To <kkto@csis.hku.hk>]

>>>>> "Cameron" == Cameron Matheson <cmatheson3@hotpop.com> writes:

    Cameron> What do you mean by the "From "-thing?

Send a mail to yourselves, having a line starting with "From ", and see what
is the result.  What you will get is this:

--- example ---
>From time to time you get a line starting with the word From.
--- end example ---

If you use an mbox-style mail box, you will see a ">" character there at the
beginning.  This is not seen by anyone using maildir, and I didn't type
that in my message.

    Cameron> I have always just used mbox because that is what fetchmail
    Cameron> puts my mail into but this thread has aroused my interest in
    Cameron> maildir... Can i use maildir w/ fetchmail/exim?  If not, how
    Cameron> does one get maildir,

For exim: yes.  For fetchmail: dunno (perhaps not).  But you can always ask
fetchmail to put the mail forward to another processor like a local exam, or
procmail, which does support maildir.

    Cameron> and what are the technical advantages?

If you don't like the idea that you have mails with "From " lines modified
to "suit" the mailbox, or the idea that mails pile up into huge files so
that it takes forever to delete or move one message, or the idea that to
know how many mails you are having you must read and parse the whole mailbox
file (which might well be counted in megabytes), or the idea that when you
are reading the mailbox the E-mail delivery program must not write into your
mailbox at the same time or the mailbox gets corrupted; while at the same
time you don't afraid that your filesystem suddenly have ten thousand files
because each mail ends up into a file, maildir is for you.

For me, each mail has two copies.  I regularly read one of them, the
"regular" copy, which is stored as maildir.  I use spamassissin to scan for
junk, let Gnus throw mails away without too much care, etc., so that I can
control the number of files for storing mails (currently around 2000).  To
minimize the wastage on filesystem space, I use reiserfs on my mail
partition, although an ext3 partition with tail files enabled should have
similar effect.  The other "unprocessed" copy are kept in mbox format for
months or even years, just in case when I accidentally delete a mail that I
want, when I can rush to it, tail it and hope to extract the needed message.

Regards,
Isaac.