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email:maildir

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Maildir

The maildir standard mailbox format is described in maildir(5).

  • Each maildir contains a set of subdirectories: cur, new and tmp.
  • Enhanced maildirs support subfoldering through contained maildirs whose name starts with a dot (e.g. maildir/.sub/{cur,new,tmp}).
  • Many IMAP implementations are maildir compatible.

Subfolder

  • Each subfolder name by convention has a leading dot (.).
  • The internal structure of a subfolder is exactly the same as a regular maildir, i.e. the three subdirectories cur, new and tmp must exist.

Subfolders of a subfolder don't reside in the subfolder! I.e. the hierarchy ends on the subfolder level, all consecutive subfolders are constructed by using special names. See the following example:

$HOME/Maildir/cur
$HOME/Maildir/new
$HOME/Maildir/tmp

$HOME/Maildir/.Folder
$HOME/Maildir/.Folder/cur
$HOME/Maildir/.Folder/new
$HOME/Maildir/.Folder/tmp

$HOME/Maildir/.Folder.Sub
$HOME/Maildir/.Folder.Sub/cur
$HOME/Maildir/.Folder.Sub/new
$HOME/Maildir/.Folder.Sub/tmp

Here Sub is a subfolder of the subfolder Folder.

maildirmake(1)

Is a simple script to create maildirs or maildir subfolders.

Use the following command to create a subfolder inside a maildir:

maildirmake -f <SubfolderName> <PathToMaildir>
email/maildir.txt · Last modified: 2009/01/12 13:36 by 127.0.0.1