For the poplib.POP3 object, docs say: list([which]) Request message list, result is in the form (response, ['mesg_num octets', ...]). If which is set, it is the message to list.
But (I've folded the long line): Python 2.3.5 (#2, May 4 2005, 08:51:39) [GCC 3.3.5 (Debian 1:3.3.5-12)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import poplib >>> p = poplib.POP3("annie") >>> p.user("poptest") '+OK' >>> p.pass_("poptest") '+OK' >>> p.list() ('+OK', ['1 2680', '2 2720', '3 9996', '4 23368', '5 2267', '6 2661', '7 4925', '8 2548', '9 10114', '10 1850', '11 14239', '12 6678', '13 6592', '14 10011', '15 3554', '16 5764', '17 5080', '18 9998', '19 2056', '20 6354', '21 3031', '22 2868', '23 6325', '24 2566', '25 4827', '26 2995', '27 2963', '28 2548', '29 9138', '30 2408', '31 2245', '32 2547', '33 2439', '34 9816', '35 2584', '36 10259', '37 1997', '38 4930', '39 1859', '40 9105', '41 6649', '42 6776', '43 2338', '44 17808', '45 4960', '46 1785', '47 2123', '48 2011', '49 9124', '50 1910', '51 1307', '52 18869', '53 2507', '54 19099', '55 2328', '56 2069', '57 1654', '58 2346', '59 2891', '60 1865', '61 9334'], 548) >>> Note the trailing ", 548". By symmetry with the POP3.retr() function, I'll guess that it's the number of octets in the response; it gets bigger with more messages. I've tried this against three different servers (popa3d, some version of Exchange, whatever's on RedHat 7.2), and two versions of python (2.3.5 on Debian sarge, 2.2 on AIX 5.1) and it's the same on all of them. It could be that I'm insane, but I'd prefer to believe this is a doc error that no one ever noticed because everybody uses POP3.list()[1]. You be the judge! Steve -- Steve Greenland The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the world. -- seen on the net -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list