Re: How to remove empty maildir?

[Ionel Mugurel Ciobica]

On 23-09-2009, at 15h 21'53", Chris G wrote about "Re: How to remove empty 
maildir?"
> > 
> There's no atomic way of checking if all three sub-directories are
> empty so, in the general case, some other process may come along
> and put something in one of the sub-directories after you have
> checked it but before you do the removal.

Not if you rename them before you do the check (not tested):

 for A in all-mailboxes ; do
     cd $A
     mv new new-$$
     mv tmp tmp-$$
     mv cur cur-$$
     if [ `find ???-$$ -type f | wc -l` -eq '0' ]; then
           if [ -e new ] && [ -e tmp ] && [ -e cur ] ; then
              echo "$A was empty but just right now some e-mail arrived."
              rmdir ???-$$
           else
              echo "$A is empty."
              rm -fr ../$A
              echo "Ups, $A was empty! Now is gone..."
           fi
     else
          echo "$A has mail."
          mv new-$$ new
          mv tmp-$$ tmp
          mv cur-$$ cur
     fi
  done



You can also turn off $sendmail when you do the check :-))

Ionel