Jakob Hirsch wrote:
> Quoting W B Hacker:
>
>>>> The 'classical' has them as subdirs under .INBOX, and/or further
>>>> subdirs under subdirs etc. ad (some finite, but arbitrarily large, OS
>>>> & fs-sepcific) limit.
>>> Can folders have subfolders, defined in a recursive fashion? The answer
>>> is no.
>> I'd have to re-install it to determine if it will *present* it if it
>> finds it in place (created by Exim, for example), but I suspect it will
>> do so.
>> Dovecot certainly does, and it is not alone. Some others do not.
>
> This is not true (at least for the current rc, but it would surprise me
> if this was different in a previous version).
>
'Oh yee of little faith...'
;-)
That was two successive 'ls' outputs from a bash shell.
Note from the command issued that we were 'boring down' one level.
>> conducive# ls /data/mail/conducive.org/wbh/Maildir
>
> reformatted to match the layout in your MUA:
>
>> .INBOX
>> .INBOX.Suspect
>> .Sent
>> .Trash
>> .Suspect
>
Look at the second list.
> I don't see any folder having a subfolder. Even if there were, they are
> obviously not shown in your MUA. You just proved yourself wrong.
>
I'm not here for the argument.
I've been *using* this for years, and it may be 'of interest' to other Exim
users, especially for group working, shared folders, archive browsing, et al,
where a subdir structure makes it easier to manage access rights, apply
softlinks, et al.
To be clear, here it is with the 'ls -lF' flag in gruesome detail.
(UID:GID are not those we actually use)
First level: Note the initial 'd' and final '/' indicating directory
Note also dir perm diffs - needed to permit search and traversal of
lower-levels. Clear now?
conducive# ls -lF /data/mail/conducive.org/wbh/Maildir
total 2780
drwx------ 2 exim mail 512 May 25 2006 .INBOX/
drwx------ 5 exim mail 512 Jan 27 11:59 .INBOX.Suspect/
drwx------ 5 exim mail 512 Jan 25 09:18 .Sent/
drwxrwx--- 5 exim mail 512 Mar 5 03:13 .Suspect/
drwx------ 5 exim mail 512 Jan 11 16:37 .Trash/
-rw------- 1 exim mail 106 Apr 15 2006 .customflags
-rw------- 1 exim mail 33 Apr 17 2006 .subscriptions
drwxrwx--- 2 exim mail 140800 Mar 5 03:19 cur/
-rw------- 1 exim mail 118 Jan 3 13:48 dovecot-keywords
-rw------- 1 exim mail 123228 Mar 5 03:10 dovecot-uidlist
-rw------- 1 exim mail 40280 Mar 5 03:21 dovecot.index
-rw------- 1 exim mail 2298880 Mar 5 03:10 dovecot.index.cache
-rw------- 1 exim mail 52432 Mar 5 03:21 dovecot.index.log
-rw------- 1 exim mail 136860 Feb 27 02:48 dovecot.index.log.2
drwxrwx--- 2 exim mail 512 Mar 5 03:10 new/
-rw------- 1 exim mail 39 May 29 2006 subscriptions
drwxrwx--- 2 exim mail 512 Mar 5 03:05 tmp/
Step two - we look at one of those above, '.Suspect' as was shown in the screenshot:
conducive# ls -lF /data/mail/conducive.org/wbh/Maildir/.Suspect
total 570
-rw------- 1 exim mail 49 Apr 18 2006 .customflags
-rw------- 1 exim mail 1608 May 28 2006 .imap.index
-rw------- 1 exim mail 22350 May 28 2006 .imap.index.data
-rw------- 1 exim mail 2576 Apr 16 2006 .imap.index.log
-rw------- 1 exim mail 1556 May 28 2006 .imap.index.tree
drwxrwx--- 2 exim mail 21504 Mar 5 03:10 cur/
-rw------- 1 exim mail 63 Dec 16 05:22 dovecot-keywords
-rw------- 1 exim mail 17532 Mar 5 03:10 dovecot-uidlist
-rw------- 1 exim mail 6464 Mar 5 03:13 dovecot.index
-rw------- 1 exim mail 333824 Mar 5 03:11 dovecot.index.cache
-rw------- 1 exim mail 1176 Mar 5 03:13 dovecot.index.log
-rw------- 1 exim mail 131144 Mar 3 19:02 dovecot.index.log.2
drwxrwx--- 2 exim mail 512 Mar 5 03:10 new/
drwxrwx--- 2 exim mail 512 Mar 5 03:10 tmp/
> Or did you mean IMAP subfolders?
What else?
POP only has one 'bucket' - the INBOX.
A single (indexed) flat-file in MBox format.
Bit more complex in Maildr. Has subdirs, even.
Anything else is ordinarily the work of an imapd and client.
Note ~/.INBOX.Suspect/ as well as .Suspect, above and on the screenshot.
> That's what the separator is used for
The 'dot' ing convention for sub <whatever>, instead of '/' or '\' allows for
cross-platform use as it works 'after a fashion' on DOS and Unix as well as 'Big
Iron' .... where a 'dot' is (the equivalent of) a 'subdirectory'.
That - and 'hiding' files from the unprivileged on certain OS, is all it
accomplishes.
> (mentioned in the quoted part you *snip*ped away). It's pretty obvious
> that IMAP subfolders are not represented by file system subfolders.
>
It should be "pretty obvious" from the 'ls' output, that some of these most
certainly *are* subfolders, and that the one chosen for illustration has further
subfolders.... Maildirs are like that.
Engage eyeballs bedore putting keyboard in gear.
;-)
Bill
