[Dovecot] maildir and the separator for subfolder

[Glenn Leavell]

On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 02:33:41PM +0200, Timo Sirainen wrote:

> On Thu, 2007-02-15 at 09:23 +0100, David Bonnafous wrote:
> > 
> > I use dovecot 1.0rc15 with one maildir namespace.
> > 
> > I'd like to be able to use '.' in folders and subfolders name.
> 
> The only way to do that is to change the sources:
> 
> src/lib-storage/index/maildir/maildir-storage.h
> 
> #define MAILDIR_FS_SEP '.'
> #define MAILDIR_FS_SEP_S "."
> 
> Change both of these to whatever you want the separator to be. I
> wouldn't recommend ':' though, it could cause problems.

Would it be possible (and would it make sense) to use some sort of
"escaping" to make the separator used for encoding hierarchy in the backend
Maildir *directories* transparent to the client and to the users?  (I
emphasize *directories* to distinguish this separator from the separator as
used in the IMAP protocol).  This could be similar to the common practice
in shells and other environments of escaping special characters with a
backslash.  For example, if the filesystem separator were a dot, then a
single mailbox referenced as "i.like.dots" might be encoded in the
filesystem as ".i..like..dots".  If this mailbox were a parent of "child",
then we'd have the directory name ".i..like..dots.child".

-- 
Glenn Leavell <glenn at usg.edu>
Office of Information and Instructional Technology
Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia