[pmmail-list] alright, I've had enough ...

[Alex Taylor]

On Mon, 16 May 2005 23:17:00 +1000, "Rod Whitworth" wrote:

>A single file ........... but it depends on two things: (i) how well the 
>app manages the file. and (ii) whether some external event can get at it. 
>It seems that nearly everybody writing MUAs is an out of work Unix hacker 
>trained in Sendmail and maybe that's due to many of the new ones (MUAs) 
>being designed for Linux where they'll fit right in with Sendmail or that 
>horrible UW crap.

Speaking of UW, ISTR reading in one of their FAQs why they think it's a 
good idea, at least for IMAP, to use a single-file mailstore.  Apparently 
they think the overhead of multiple open-read operations is massively 
greater than that of seeking through a single file.  Maybe this comes from 
a background of running on Unix filesystems where that's a big issue, I'm 
not sure.

Admittedly, it's probably more of an issue for the server-side mailstore 
than for a client...

-- 
Alex Taylor <alextaylor41@rogers.com>
http://www.cs-club.org/~alex