On Mon, Aug 07, 2023 at 01:57:04AM +1000, Nemo Thorx wrote: > Quoting Ed Blackman from 04 Aug (a Friday in 2023) at 1434 hours... > > Any suggestions for a command line program to select emails for > > deletion based on command line options? I specifically want one that > > can remove emails that were received more than X days ago, but can > > also express "but don't delete if they're flagged". > > <snip> > > > I could call mutt (see, kinda OT!) with "-e" to tag, delete, sync, and > > quit, but that seems fiddly and heavyweight. > > But if it's being run from cron overnight or something, are you ever > going to notice? > > > I could give up on using the message headers to determine the message > > date, learn how filenames are constructed in Maildir (to read the > > flags) and use a shell script built around "find". > > I'm reasonably confident that all filenames (before the ':') are only > convention (I convert an nntp spool to maildir and name them according > to my own naming convention which everything (well, mutt and dovecot) > then honours), and mtime is unused by anything and/or not to be trusted. > > So honetsly, I'd suggest mutt's -e, since it gives you mutt's pattern > matching which is much more powerful than archivemail (admittedly, > I only used that for trivial stuff and only many years ago) and likely > more than anything else available. > > eg, instead of just "received more than X days ago and not flagged", > mutt can let you select/ignore whole threads based on those parameters, > and others alike. eg, I once had archiving setup on a folder-hook thus: > > folder-hook !(Maildir$|archive|search|mfolder|.r.) 'push > "<sort-reverse>t<tag-pattern>~m 600- !~(~m -600) !~(~r <32d) !~(~N) !~(~F) > !~D<enter><tag-prefix-cond><save-message>^.archive<enter><enter><end-cond><sort-mailbox>t<collapse-all>"' > > To decode that: sort reverse threaded, select all messages after the > first 600, but not if it's part of a thread within the first 600, not if > it's in a thread with messages received in the last 32 days, not if it's > in a thread with messages marked 'New' or 'Flagged', and not if it's > a message already marked delete. Then save to the archive mailbox and > established my desired sorting and thread collapse visibility. > > Basically - I wanted a thread-preserving archiving mechanism, and mutt's > thread-aware pattern matching gave it to me. (I didn't include sync in > that setup, preferring at the time to let that occur with mailbox > closing) > > In a delete scenario as you're seeking, I'd suggest a multi-step process > which first archives threads you've contributed to - and only then > deleting old ignorable threads. > > Sure It's fiddly - which is your argument against using mutt. > > ...But it's powerful - which is my argument for using mutt! > > Aside - I used folder-hook before because I didn't know of the "-e" > option, and I stopped using it because I found I was often using mutt as > a mailbox debug tool, and this was just getting in the way. I can see > myself going down the rabbithole and reimplementing my old archiver now > (where "now" is "sometime in the next few months, maybe" :)
Another very late reply to this thread, but I happen to have implemented almost exactly the concept you're describing. It's a python3 script that deletes whole threads that meet the criteria: - All messages are markes as read - No messages in the thread are unread - No messages in the thread are flagged (starred) - All messages in the thread are older than N days It's been several years since I've looked at this code (which in my mind is a good thing, since that means it hasn't broken), so definitely give it a read-over to see if it's suitable for your purposes. In my case, I run it directly on the mail server via a systemd service and timer. https://seangreenslade.com/source-code/scripts/list-thread-pruner/listthreadpruner-v0.1.py Happy to answer any questions about the code if anyone is curious or wants to use it. --Sean
