[dovecot] Re: Changing hierarchy separator to '/'

[Timo Sirainen]

On Thu, 2003-04-17 at 00:17, Charlie Brady wrote:
> To summarize:
> 
> - I'd like to use / as hierarchy separator, so that existing .mailboxlist 
> files can be used (after moving them to ./Maildir/.subscriptions)
> - I'd like to change the filename separator to ';' rather than '.', so 
> that users can have folder names containing '.'.
> - I don't care about Courier compatibility.

Then you mostly just have to change '.' to ';' everywhere. And in
maildir-list.c do the '/' -> ';' change in the search mask first to make
it easier.

> As an academic exercise, is there a reason other than Courier 
> compatibility that subfolders can't be directories nested inside other 
> directories? IOW, if we use / as the hierarchy separator, could we also 
> use it in the filesystem paths of folders.

I'm not sure. I did think of doing this before, but I think I figured
out some really good reason why the current way is better. Or maybe not,
I can't remember.

> (I realise that a reasonable 
> amount of code would need to change to make this possible).

It wouldn't need that much code changes, mbox works that way and most of
the code could be taken from there.