Re: MAILDIR! (was Re: Organising Mail)
On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 12:37:30AM +0200 I heard the voice of
Toby, and lo! it spake thus:
>
> The basic idea behind maildirs is having a directory for each
> mailbox, containing the messages as single files. Main advantages:
> opening the mailbox and deleting messages are done MUCH faster.
Not really.
CHANGING the messages (editing, deleting, fiddling with flags, etc) is
a lot faster, since it only has to rewrite one file. But it's a whole
lot faster to suck in one file than to open, read, close, and move on
to the next a thousand or two thousand or ten thousand times.
I use maildir for all my active mailboxes, because it's a lot easier
to work with, and avoids a lot of potential (and fortunately rare, but
VERY nasty when they happen) corruption opportunities mbox gives you.
But for archives? mbox all the way. The world only has so many
inodes; do your part for conservation!
--
Matthew Fuller (MF4839) | fullermd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Systems/Network Administrator | http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/
"The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I
haven't figured out how to light the middle yet"