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DEFAULT-MAILDIR interaction

1997-06-02 11:59:00
Philip Guenther suggested to Mike Harris,

| Since the default mailbox has an absolute path, changing MAILDIR won't
| affect delivery to $DEFAULT.

Make that "If" instead of "Since".

Changing MAILDIR will affect $DEFAULT if you have redefined DEFAULT as a
relative path or as a simple basename.  If you don't want the value of
DEFAULT to follow along with changes to $MAILDIR, then be careful to use a
full absolute path (or variables that expand to a full absolute path) when
you assign DEFAULT.

The same applies to ORGMAIL, though I'd consider it risky ever to assign
a relative path or a simple basename to $ORGMAIL.

I have situations where I intentionally set DEFAULT to a simple basename
and then let changes to MAILDIR carry $DEFAULT along, and they work as I
described.

[Yes, it can be argued that a simple basename is a special case of the idea
 of a relative path, but I felt it safer to state both, even if some of you
 consider the result redundant.]