ken wrote:
so my question, before i report this as a limitation with mairix: is
there any reason that an MH folder shouldn't have an all-numeric name?
i did grep the man pages a bit, but didn't find a specification for
folder names
So, the answer is ... you should not have a folder with an all-numeric name.
okay. i can live with that.
i don't think the behavior needs to change, although perhaps it
shouldn't have been so easy to create the folder in the first place.
$ refile +1234
Create folder "/home/pgf/Mail/1234"?
a quick look says that create_folder() and rcvstore.c:main() might be
candidates for an error check. there's also make_intermediates(), but
it's a utility function, and i don't think that it's ever used to
create a folder.
in the meantime, any objections if i add this new section to
mh-folders.man, or something like it?
Naming
nmh folders can be given arbitrary names, with one exception:
folders should not be given all-numeric names. This
limitation results from nmh messages themselves being stored
in numerically named files -- allowing folders to be named
similarly would make nmh slower, and introduce usage ambiguities.
paul
I looked at folder_read(), the main function that nmh uses to scan a
folder and create the folder structure (which contains an index of all
valid messages). It calls readdir() on a directory and checks to see if
atoi() works on the filename; if it succeeds then it assumes that it's a
message. It does NOT check if the file is a directory or not (normally
stat() is not called on every message as that would be too expensive).
In theory you could use d_type that's part of struct dirent to see if
it's a file or not, but not all operating systems or filesystems support
that and I am reluctant to change long-standing practice for what is
admittedly an edge case.
While it may 'work' in the short term, I think like Conrad said you'll
run into problems in the long run.
--Ken
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=----------------------
paul fox, pgf(_at_)foxharp(_dot_)boston(_dot_)ma(_dot_)us (arlington, ma,
where it's 53.2 degrees)
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