Re: [Nmh-workers] The invisible mail folder

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:07:47 +1100
    From:        Joel Reicher <address@hidden>
    Message-ID:  <address@hidden>

  | In fact, there looks to be a host of inconsistent behaviour. "+/" will
  | scan the root *directory*. "+.." does *not* scan the directory above
  | the folder root, but rather the directory above that. "+." scans the
  | directory above the folder root.

That's not what I see.   scan +. for me scans the current folder,
scan +.. scans the parent of the current folder.   scan +/ certainly
attempts to scan the root directory, but that's no different than
scan +/any/absolute/path which is needed when you want to look in
someone else's MH folders (assuming, of course, that you have permission).

Aside from a few people being surprised by something they haven't seen
before, I'm not sure I see any great problem here.

I certainly would not like to lose the behaviour that + references
$HOME/$(mhparam path) as a folder name (the base of your normal MH
tree, which for many people, but not me, is $HOME/Mail).

I certainly agree with you that the "problem" with all numeric sub-folder
names needs to be fixed in the applications that expect numeric names
to be messages (remove that expectation) rather than in attempting to
enforce anything against creating such things.   If a file is not a
message, at most it should result in a diagnostic, after which the file
should be just ignored (as if it did not exist).   Aside from directories
all kinds of other things might exist in the MH directory tree, and have
names that are just digits.   MH should not die no matter what is there.

kre

ps: I am using a slightly old version of nmh ...
  scan -- nmh-1.0.4 [compiled on lilac.noi.kre.to at Sat Jan 24 12:50:44 UTC 
2004]