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