Hi

[2020-03-21 09:54] markus schnalke <mei...@marmaro.de>
> [2019-12-15 17:55] Philipp Takacs <phil...@bureaucracy.de>
> >
> > During that I found the Previous-Sequence again. I don't see a reason
> > why we need this feature. The usecases, I see, for the feature are better
> > handled with mark or the backlog of your shell. But I don't use this
> > feature.

During reading some old mails on the nmh mailing list I found a use case.
Put mails in a sequence after a refile[0]. Not sure if this works, but
for this I would suggest to add a -preserve switch to refile instead of
using previous-sequence for this, like nmh has done.

> Just for reference, the section from mh-sequence(7):
>
>    The Previous Sequence
>        Mmh provides the ability to remember the `msgs' or  `msg'
>        argument last given to an mmh command.  The entry `Previā€
>        ous-Sequence' should be defined in the mmh  profile;  its
>        value  should  be  a  sequence  name or multiple sequence
>        names separated by spaces.  If  this  entry  is  defined,
>        when   an  mmh  command  finishes,  it  will  define  the
>        sequence(s) named in the value of this entry to be  those
>        messages  that  were  specified to the command.  Hence, a
>        profile entry of
>
>             Previous-Sequence: pseq
>
>        directs any mmh command that accepts a  `msg'  or  `msgs'
>        argument  to define the sequence `pseq' as those messages
>        when it finishes.
>
>        Note: there can be a performance  penalty  in  using  the
>        `Previous-Sequence'  facility.   If  it  is used, all mmh
>        programs have to write the sequence  information  to  the
>        .mh_sequences file for the folder each time they run.  If
>        the `Previous-Sequence' profile entry  is  not  included,
>        only pick and mark will write to the .mh_sequences file.

Actually the last sentence is wrong. A lot more mmh programs write
the .mh_sequences file, like show, inc, ...

> Besides: It does introduce a lot of write accesses to the sequence
> files.

Would it only be the write access itself, it wouldn't be that bad. You
still need to enable it.

> Before we remove it, I just would like to know why it was
> introduced in MH the first time and what possible other usecases
> there could be. This means asking on the nmh-workers mailing list.
> Both, out of curiosity and as a double-check in case we've not
> thought on something. Do you wanna write this message or should
> I?

This is a good idea. I want to write this mail.

So conclusion ask the nmh guys for use cases we missed and if there
aren't any, remove it.

Philipp

[0] https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2005-12/msg00086.html

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