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

["Michael D. Schleif" <mds@helices.org>]

Vineet Kumar wrote:
> 
> * Michael D. Schleif (mds@helices.org) [030209 19:32]:
> >
> > Jeff wrote:
> > > I've not used mh mail boxes before, only maildir and mbox.  I use
> > > maildir for my active mailboxes for it's ability to keep messages from
> > > getting messed up on delivery (sorry for the non-tech reason).  For
> > > mail boxes that I use for archive and are non-active, I use mbox for
> > > it's ease in backing up.
> >
> > This is interesting -- is it possible to use two (2) mailbox formats at
> > once?
> >
> > Can mutt be used to review incoming mail under maildir, and also to
> > browse my archived mail under mbox?  How?
> 
> Yes.  You don't need to do anything special; when you open a mailbox, it
> figures out what type it is.
> 
> > > Performance-wise, I don't think you'll notice a difference in loading
> > > the mail box on a modern machine.  On older, slower machines, you
> > > might see the mbox loading faster than the maildir folders.
> > >
> > > If I had an archive mail box that size, I'd leave it as an mbox so I
> > > can back it up easier since it's a single file as opposed to a
> > > directory.
> >
> > My biggest concern is number of inodes.
> 
> Well, you can tar and compress a maildir, and then it only takes 1, same
> as an mbox.  That works fine for archiving, though is not as convenient
> for active mailboxes.  I also don't really buy that a maildir is
> difficult to back up (especially if you tar.(gz|bz2) it).  I like using
> maildirs mostly because mbox feels like a dirty hack, with the whole
> "From " thing.  I also like the increased scriptability using standard
> GNU tools like grep to find and process individual messages, instead of
> having to use some sort of mbox-parsing perl module.

Under netscrape I have directory hierarchies such as:

	Lists
	  |__debian
	  |     |__debian-users
	  |     |__debian-devel
	  |__tomcat-users

With many lists and so many old mails, a flat list of _all_ Maildirs
will quickly become difficult to navigate . . .

How can this be done with Maildir?

-- 

Best Regards,

mds
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