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Re: saving from IMAP folder F to F deletes



On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 03:35:29PM -0600, Kyle Wheeler wrote:
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> On Wednesday, December 17 at 03:15 PM, quoth David Young:
> > Today I have found that if I save a message M in IMAP folder F to 
> > the same folder F, and then I sync folder F by tapping '$', then 
> > message M is no longer present in F.
> 
> Interesting - I wonder if maybe your IMAP server is trying to be 
> helpful in a nonstandard way.
> 
> > This is different behavior than I expect for two reasons: saving a 
> > message should not be a destructive operation, no matter what the 
> > destination folder.
> 
> Unfortunately, the way it works normally is that "moving" a message 
> between IMAP folders is actually a copy-then-delete-the-original 
> operation. I believe the reason for this is buried in the problems of 
> dealing with multiple IMAP clients accessing the same folder (the 
> fewer semantics you have, the better), but I'm not certain. In any 
> case, mutt is showing you how things "really work". If you check out 
> the IMAP RFC, there's a "COPY" command, but not a "MOVE" command. So 
> all "move" operations are actually destructive operations
> 
> My guess is that what is happening is this: as always, mutt tells the 
> server to copy the message and then tells the server to delete the 
> original. On *MOST* IMAP servers, the copy operation will create a 
> duplicate message even if the destination is the same as the source. 
> However, I'm guessing that on your server, copying a message into the 
> folder it's already in is considered a no-op, so no actual copying 
> occurs. Then, when mutt deletes the original, it's deleting the *only* 
> copy of the message.
> 
> If that's what's going on, then your mail server is broken; the COPY 
> command is supposed to be able to create duplicate messages.
> 
> The way to test this is to see what happens when you use mutt's 
> <copy-message> function instead of <save-message> (by default, 
> copy-message is triggered by tapping C). When you copy a message from 
> a folder into the same folder, does your IMAP server produce a 
> duplicate message?

I just tried this on my inbox.  'C' works as expected: it duplicates
the message.  's' deletes.  The IMAP server is Dovecot.

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung@xxxxxxxxxxx      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933