[NBLUG/talk] Opinions: maildir vs mbox

Daniel Smith dls at daniel.org
Thu Jun 12 10:02:01 PDT 2003


Even though I use Eudora at the moment, I used to
run MH / xmh as my mail client, which uses individual files
for messages. [1]

Perhaps a deciding factor on "which way to go?" is
this:  will you be accessing your email messages
from outside a mail program?   There's a lot that
is easy to do with individual files:

* can run grep / other searches / perl scripts against
the directory tree of email - easy shell / GUI access
from outside email program

* can easily make symbolic links to individual messages,
so that emails of interest are available elsewhere in
your filesystem

* easy for a database (such as MySQL) to refer to it, and
to add new entries (without having to scan monolithic
mailboxes)

For me, the keyword for using separate files for
each message would be "flexibility".

Daniel

[1] just dated myself there.. we're talking early 90's

-- 
Daniel L. Smith - Sonoma County, CA - AIM: SonomaDaniel
JavaJoint.com   - daniel.org        - ThereAndThen.org




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