Mail Servers

[dsr at tao.merseine.nu]

On Sun, Sep 21, 2003 at 12:03:47PM -0400, Rich Braun wrote:
> - Since my prefered email MUA for searches is emacs, I vastly prefer Unix mbox
> format so I can search email quickly & easily, and can move folders around in
> an archives quite easily.  The maildirs format strikes me as cumbersome. 
> Perhaps I'm old-fashioned?  I'd love to see some arguments from folks who have
> made the switch from mbox to maildirs.

OK, arguments.

Maildir holds each message in a single file. This means that normal UNIX
tools -- cp, rm, wc, grep -- work without any special knowledge of mail
formats. 

Losing one file loses one message. MUAs which need to build indexes for
speed on mboxes don't necessarily have to do that for Maildirs.

This also means that every file eats an inode, but modern filesystems
reduce that impact. 

When you follow the Maildir algorithm as well as the format, you are
guaranteed message safety even across network mounted file systems.

Maildir files are smaller than mbox files (because they only have 1
message each) so you spend less time opening Maildirs.

When you need to move some but not all of the messages in an archive,
it's much faster with Maildirs than with mboxes. Find the messages, move
the files, done, versus find the messages, add them to the destination
mbox, remove them from the source mbox, write everything, done.

Google for emacs and maildir and see what tools others have built.

-dsr-