On Thu, 20 May 2004 11:44:49 -0500
"John T. Hoffoss" <hoff0438 at umn.edu> wrote:

> > Maildir support is definately a good way to go, two IMAP 
> > servers that work well with Maildir are Courier IMAP and BincIMAP.
> 
> I have looked but have been unable to find a listing of significant
> differences. Can someone provide a few reasons/situations where mbox
> is better than maildir, and vice-versa?

Good question, I don't have a whole lot to add to the previous replies other than Maildir in my experience is much nicer for backing up email messages, it's even possible to write a simple script to analyze if a single message has a huge attachment and decide if it's something you really want to back up.  

I also like that the name of the file tells you if you've replied, read, forwarded the messages, etc. which also has some nice scripting possibilities.  It's also much easier to admin an email account without having to use a client.  Generally this is never needed though unless you're in a pinch.  I've tested if accounts are setup correctly by sending them a test email, watching for a new file in the maildir, verify that it was the message I sent and then simply rm the file so the customer doesn't see the test message.  

I've thought about taking a lot of my saved mailing list email messages and putting them in MySQL or something and having a fulltext search with a little web front end so I don't have to burden my client so much when searching for messages, Maildir format messages would make programming this application a little easier.

I've had great experiences with Maildir, my only bizarre incident was when I moved messages from one server to another I had a small problem, which was my own fault.  With mbox, I've had more problems, but I don't think it was the fault of the format so much as it was the fault of a system that someone really made a mess of.

None of the things I mentioned cannot be done with mbox, I just personally find Maildir easier to work with.

YMMV

Josh


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