[Gllug] Mailbox compacting

[Chris Jones]

Hi

t.clarke wrote:
> I am not sure whether this is remotely relevant or helpful as I am not sure
> about 'mailbox' format!    Our emails (on a SCO box) are held in  what I think
> is mbox format of  4 delimiting binary ones at the start and end of each email.

Part of the problem with mbox is that there isn't really a formal format
specification. However, I've not come across any mail storage format
delimited that way which claims to be mbox.

The quick version of the generally accepted mbox format is that mails
are just separated by a blank line followed by a line which starts "From
" (note there's a space after 'From' and this is important because
"From:" will almost always be in the headers and you don't want to split
the mail there!)
FWIW, this explains why emails which have a line in the body which
starts "From " will be rewritten to "> From " in some mail clients
(because it would confuse simple parsers).

mbox is a horrible format to work with because it's so unpredictable and
can perform poorly. Having said that, it doesn't eat inodes all day like
maildir (which can also perform poorly).

If you value your hair, don't ever start writing an email client. It's
impossible to do well ;)

Cheers,
-- 
Chris Jones
  cmsj at tenshu.net
   www.tenshu.net
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