Re: how does mutt (the code) determine unread email?

On Fri Jun05'26 02:36:20PM, Kurt Hackenberg wrote:
> From: Kurt Hackenberg <[email protected]>
> Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2026 14:36:20 -0400
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: how does mutt (the code) determine unread email?
>=20
> On Fri, Jun 05, 2026 at 10:17 -0500, Ranjan Maitra via Mutt-users wrote:
>=20
> > I use the Maildir++ format with mutt....
>=20
> > Now it is my understanding that mutt moves accessed email from new to
> > cur when a folder is accessed. However, the coloring appears to indica=
te
> > that the mail is not read (unless we go to that message/file). Where
> > does it get this information from? Is it from the access time of the
> > file in cur which if later than the creation/edited time for the file =
is
> > assumed that the file is read? Or something else?
>=20
> I believe Mutt uses the maildir mechanism: when it displays a message, i=
t
> sets that message's flag "seen", by adding the character 'S' in an optio=
nal
> short string near the end of the message filename.
>=20
> See Wikipedia on maildir:
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maildir>

Yes, of course! I am sorry, I completely forgot about looking into the act=
ual Maildir structure. Thank you for pointing this out.

Best wishes,
Ranjan