RE: A suggestion for RFC1939

I agree that the UIDL to the message number mapping doesn't change during
one session, but it can change between consecutive sessions.

For example:
there are 100 mails in the mailbox.
I have retreived 95 and my connection to the mail server is terminated
abruptly. Though I have issued DELE after every RETR my messages still lie
in the mail box, and in my next connection to the mail server I have to
match the UIDL of the message already read by me with every message in the
mailbox before retreiving new ones. BUT, if I could use UIDL with the DELE
command I wouldn't have had bothered about that and issued a batch delete
for all the messages already retreived and still be sure that I have not
deleted an unread message. Wouldn't that save me from comparing the
MessageID of every message on the server with the ones already read?

-Faheem.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 27 March 2000 09:09
To: Faheem Ahmed Khan
Subject: Re: A suggestion for RFC1939




> Faheem Ahmed Khan wrote:
> I don't understand why RFC1939 restricts to using message number with
> the DELE command. Using the messageID (UIDL) with the DELE command
> would be a lot more useful where the user agent can be sure of which
> message it is deleting.

I don't see how it could be more useful, since the client needs to know
the message numbers for the other commands, such as RETR.  The UIDL to
message number mapping never changes during a session, so I don't see
how the client could be "more sure."

At the time UIDL was created, we were trying hard to limit the number
and scope of changes to the protocol.  The fewer changes, the fewer
things for implementations to get wrong.