Matthias Andree <ma(_at_)dt(_dot_)e-technik(_dot_)uni-dortmund(_dot_)de>:
The whole TOP-vs-RETR issue is bogus. TOP isn't ever needed except for
the UIDL emulation code to retrieve Message-IDs. Anything short of
"retrieve everything" or "retrieve by UID" won't work and can miss any
amount of mail at any time. There is no such thing as a "read flag" in
POP3, so there's nothing to avoid and nothing to be gained by using TOP
other than a waste of bandwidth.
Wrong.
TOP is different from RETR in one important way. It doesn't set the
message's seen bit.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>