From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Robert Thorpe Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: using movemail directly in .emacs Date: Tue, 27 May 2014 22:23:51 +0100 Message-ID: <87oayigbko.fsf@robertthorpeconsulting.com> References: <8738fwnfs6.fsf@yun.yagibdah.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1401225867 7956 80.91.229.3 (27 May 2014 21:24:27 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 27 May 2014 21:24:27 +0000 (UTC) Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org To: lee Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue May 27 23:24:20 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1WpOr4-0007pM-Lc for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 27 May 2014 23:24:18 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:38061 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WpOr4-0001lb-6U for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 27 May 2014 17:24:18 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:57504) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WpOqn-0001k3-NZ for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 27 May 2014 17:24:08 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WpOqg-0008EQ-JV for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 27 May 2014 17:24:01 -0400 Original-Received: from outbound-smtp02.blacknight.com ([81.17.249.8]:58609) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WpOqg-0008E4-Dm for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 27 May 2014 17:23:54 -0400 Original-Received: from mail.blacknight.com (pemlinmail03.blacknight.ie [81.17.254.16]) by outbound-smtp02.blacknight.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1A6E498FFB for ; Tue, 27 May 2014 21:21:38 +0000 (UTC) Original-Received: (qmail 18645 invoked from network); 27 May 2014 21:23:52 -0000 Original-Received: from unknown (HELO RTLaptop) (rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com@[109.78.218.41]) by 81.17.254.9 with ESMTPSA (DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA encrypted, authenticated); 27 May 2014 21:23:52 -0000 In-Reply-To: <8738fwnfs6.fsf@yun.yagibdah.de> (message from lee on Tue, 27 May 2014 03:58:49 +0200) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 81.17.249.8 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:97906 Archived-At: lee writes: > The anachronism is storing many emails in one file. > > That was done in the past because file systems were used the performance > of which would be severely impacted when you had many files in the same > directory. Without this limitation, it doesn`t make sense to put many > emails into a single file, even if it`s only 10 or 5, other than for > special purposes. It is a bad idea to do that because the single file > is prone to locking problems and corruption, and it can easily become > unwieldy and very slow to work with. Using a number of single files > ("folders") doesn`t really make it better. > > IIRC, maildir supports flags (like read, answered) in the file names, > with, besides efficiency, the advantage that every MUA which supports > maildir can understand the flags. When you use mbox, you either have to > use some sort of index file to store the flags, or you need to re-write > the whole file when a flag changes, and each MUA may use their own way > for this, not understood by others. How efficient is that? > > Using mbox is as much an anachronism as using a spool file for storing > email: It`s still a single file. I agree that storing gigabytes of email in a single file is unwise. Keeping it in the spool file of a multi-user installation is a even worse since some sysadmins delete spool files that are too large. In general though storing lots of emails in a file isn't really a problem. I've used email clients that do that for many years and I haven't had any problems. I have gigabytes of mail in mbox files, but it's not all in one file. I file things and I that keeps the largest file smaller than ~150MB, most are much smaller. I don't have a very fast computer, I bought it four years ago, but even so the delay in writing out files isn't very noticable. That's because when the program writes the file out it goes into the disk cache first and it's only written to hard drive later on. I use Rmail at present, though I have used other MUAs. Rmail saves a backup file for every mbox file. Even so I've never had a problem with corruption, using Rmail or any other program. Mbox files are very simple, it's hard to get writing to them wrong. You're right about flags though. Mbox files aren't very portable between mailers for that reason. Another, bigger, problem is coding systems. Thunderbird (for example) treats mbox files as ASCII [1]. If you get a UTF-8 email in Thunderbird then it inserts it as base64 (well I assume it's base64) into the mbox. On the other hand in Rmail seems to inserts it as UTF-8. Both work correctly but in their own way. I'm not saying that it's best to use mbox files, but the problems with them aren't large. Large directory structures have other problems. [1] - I think it's ASCII, it may be Latin-1 or something. BR, Robert Thorpe