2000-05-06-07:48:49 Roberto Suarez Soto:
> Anyway, and though I know this is one of the recursive questions
> of the list, what are the advantages that you find in maildir over
> mailbox?
It's a recurring question, no doubt, but revisiting it periodically
is healthy. Here's what comes to my mind at the moment.
I've been using Maildir for a couple of years now, started when I
tried out qmail several years back, when I switched to Postfix I
used procmail with maildir patches to stick with the Maildir format.
I subscribe to dozens of lists, with varying amounts of traffic,
totals c. 600 messages a day, and keep all email forever, so my
archives are a valuable resource.
I like having the ability to use standard Unix tools to manipulate
my archives, with each message available as a distinct file.
Migrating messages to different folders by date, hooking a search
engine up, doing broad analyses, looking for historical data by
sender, subject, keyword, whatever; I find these all very pleasing
to do with a one-message-per-file format.
And at least for me, it's very, very comforting knowing that any
sort of code --- MTAs like qmail and Postfix, LDAs like procmail and
maildrop, MUAs like mutt, and programs complex or trivial, written
in C, Perl, Bourne Shell, whatever --- can all simply add and remove
messages to and from folders, with perfect safety, without ever
needing to worry about locking, all at the same time.
-Bennett
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