2000-01-14-11:07:57 Mikko Hänninen:
> Bennett Todd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on Fri, 14 Jan 2000:
> > (2) You only access the email via POP or IMAP; and
> > (3) You don't want to download the email and keep it on the
> > client with e.g. fetchmail feeding procmail (perhaps via
> > local MTA);
> >
> > then you have specified goals that can only be achieved via some
> > really revolting solution involving downloading the mail and
> > filtering it and then re-uploading it.
>
> I may be wrong, but I remember reading somewhere that IMAP supports
> moving messages from one folder to another on the server, without
> downloading? And since you can (presumably) also just retrieve
> headers from messages, it should be possible to write a remote IMAP
> filtering tool.
Wow! Sure enough, that could work. I just checked the RFC; IMAP has
a "copy" command for writing a message directly on the server from
one folder to another, you can download the headers of messages
only, and imap also has a search function for finding messages
containing a given string.
I don't see a command to run a regexp over the mailbox, or to
download just a chunk off the front of the body, so some filtering
rules (like e.g. the currently priceless spam-blocker for all the
china spam, that tosses anything with lots of unprintable
characters) couldn't be done this way.
But it does look like there's room for a cool tool if someone needs
it badly enough to want to write it.
-Bennett
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