[NBLUG/talk] Opinions: maildir vs mbox

[Eric Eisenhart]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2003 at 10:02:55AM -0700, Daniel Smith wrote:
> 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]

Unfortunately, while MH does use individual files, it has an index involved
that effectively forces all mailbox operations to require locking.

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

Personally I always find this a little clumsy; have to use rgrep or find |
xargs grep or something like that...  (too many emails for "grep */*" to
work)

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

Actually, you should really make those hard links instead of symbolic links;
changing a flag on a file will change its name with maildir, which would
break your symbolic link.  The potential downside with hardlinks, though, is
that removing the "original" will leave the linked one intact.

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

Yes, definitely more flexible with Maildir.  Also more robust.
-- 
Eric Eisenhart
NBLUG Co-Founder & Vice-President Pro Tempore
The North Bay Linux Users Group
http://nblug.org/
eric at nblug.org, IRC: Freiheit at freenode, AIM: falschfreiheit, ICQ: 48217244