On Tue, 2005-01-04 at 23:44, Matthew Miller wrote: > On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 11:33:25PM -0600, Les Mikesell wrote: > > I'd probably do that on a new setup with no existing users, but there > > is no real advantage to maildir except for imap users and it will break > > any existing programs that expect to manipulate traditional mbox format > > directly. > > No real advantage? How about: "You're able to actually tell where a message > stops and the next one begins without hoping someone has mangled the body > of the message?" The traditional in-band delimiter has worked for 20+ years with correctly written tools that do not mangle the messages. > It's also handy if you want to have, say, multiple copies of a mail client > open at once and you prefer not to corrupt your mailbox. Unix provides file locking mechanisms that allow different programs to access mailboxes without corrupting them. As usual, if you want to shoot yourself in the foot, it will happily hand you the gun.... Over the years at least 3 different locking mechanisms have been used and no one is going to force you to use the same one on all of your tools. However, it works when done right and there is no reason to arbitrarily break programs that have worked for years by changing the delivery format. --- Les Mikesell les@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
