Tinkering around with a little script, I found myself with the need to walk a directory tree and process mail messaged found within. Sometimes these end up being mbox files (with multiple messages within), sometimes it's a Maildir structure with messages in each individual file and extra holding directories, and sometimes it's a MH directory. To complicate matters, there's also the possibility of non-{mbox,maildir,mh) files such as binary MUA caches appearing alongside these messages.
Python knows how to handle each just fine as long as I tell it what type of file to expect. But is there a straight-forward way to distinguish them? (FWIW, the *nix "file" utility is just reporting "ASCII text", sometimes "with very long lines", and sometimes erroneously flags them as C or C++ files‽). All I need is "is it maildir, mbox, mh, or something else" (I don't have to get more complex for the "something else") inside an os.walk loop. Thanks for any suggestions, -tkc -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list