[bug-mailutils] Re: Request for comments on our TODO.

[Simon Josefsson]

Sergey Poznyakoff <address@hidden> writes:

>> > ** does IMAP do an EXAMINE instead of a select if the mailbox is being
> [...]
>> My understanding was that select and examine are identical, but examine
>> is readonly, I guess I was mistaken.
>
> The main difference is that EXAMINE does not leave the examined mailbox open.
> It just reports the statistics and closes it right then. So, for
> example, any attempts to FETCH something will fail.

I think Sam is correct here.  EXAMINE is the same as SELECT, only
read-only (and some other minor technicalities).  Using FETCH, SEARCH
etc in a mailbox opened with EXAMINE is fine.

6.3.2.  EXAMINE Command
...
      The EXAMINE command is identical to SELECT and returns the same
      output; however, the selected mailbox is identified as read-only.
      No changes to the permanent state of the mailbox, including
      per-user state, are permitted; in particular, EXAMINE MUST NOT
      cause messages to lose the \Recent flag.

Regards,
Simon