On Fri, 27 Aug 1999, Kim DeVaughn wrote:
> Personally, I've never found any good reason to use anything other than
> mbox style boxes. They are also easier to do "external" things with (like
> grep'ing the contents, etc), and seem to have fewer problems with "new mail"
> notification/indication.
i guess it's all comes down to personal preferences, but isn't it easier
to do "external" things when there's a 1-1 mapping between messages and
files? you can still grep just as easily, but the grep will tell you
exactly what message the thing you're grepping for is in. copying, moving,
or editing a message is a lot easier and, if you're editing a mailbox,
you best make sure that it gets locked or that mail delivery is disabled
so that things don't get ugly if you get a message destined for that box
while editing.
additionally -- and i can't compare this to mbox -- i have had fewer
problems (actually, none) with mail notification wrt mh style boxes
(plus, mh has all that nfs locking ugliness).
i agree though, maildir can waste a lot more space than mbox, but with
today's massive drives and network-based storage, space is becoming
much less of an issue (although, it's still nice to not waste space).
a minor problem i have with maildir is that not all mail-related apps
come with maildir support out-of-the-box. i'm immediately thinking
of procmail (though a nice patch exists, thankfully), but i'm sure
there are others.
pete
--
Pete Toscano h:[EMAIL PROTECTED] w:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
GPG fingerprint: AE5C 18E4 D069 76D3 9B9C D226 D86A 522F 446C 767A
PGP signature
