> > 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.
Aren't you running out of inodes, and wasting disk space with Maildir? I
receive about 1400 messages a day, and I think I would run out of
inodes, or at least waste a _lot_ of disk space.
> 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.
Some of the things you metion can also be done with mbox format I think?
> 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.
That sounds like an advantage, but I've never needed it.
Ookhoi
