On 2013-04-16, Tim Gray wrote: > On Apr 16, 2013 at 03:23 PM -0700, Gary Johnson wrote: > >Charles wrote that changing the file extension avoids having to > >rewrite a _file_, not a file _name_. > > Understood. My point is that I don't see how having an extra four > characters at the end of the file name changes that. You still only > have to change the file name...
I'm confused, but I'll give this another shot anyway. The point in not adding ".eml" to the end of a maildir file is not the effort involved, it is that a trailing ".eml" is not part of any maildir file name format description that I've found, so it is quite likely to confuse a mail client trying to parse the name of a file in a maildir directory. When the maildir format was created, it was decided to put a lot of information in the file name to avoid having to open each file to obtain or change that information. The format of the name was standardized (to a point) so that any MUA claiming to understand the maildir format could manage a set of messages written by any MUA or MDA also claiming to use the maildir format. Adding ".eml" to the end of file names breaks that interoperability contract. Regards, Gary
