[Dovecot] Not using "." as separator?

[pod]

>>>>> "GE" == Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> writes:

    GE> When using maildir storage, is there any way to use something
    GE> besides "." as the folder separator?

Please note that the following relates to dovecot 1.0.  I've not looked to
see if 1.1 behaves differently.

Yes you can use a namespace

    namespace private {
      # empty prefix indicates the default namespace
      prefix =
      inbox = yes
      separator = /
    }

However using just this dovecot will still not allow maildir mailbox names
to contain a '.'.

    GE> I like to use folder names that match people's e-mail addresses
    GE> (that's a default behavior in mutt), and "." is a pretty popular
    GE> character in e-mail addresses.  Ideally, I'd like to use "/".

The (unofficial) listescape plugin

http://www.dovecot.org/patches/1.0/listescape-plugin.c 

will allow maildir folder names to contain '.' (and '~' at the start
incidentally).  Note however that this is only a good solution if you are
offering exclusively IMAP/POP3 access to the mailstore.  If you are also
exposing mailboxes directly by a filesystem interface then standard
Maildir++ utilities are likely to get confused because a folder known to
the client as "a.b" will appear in the filesystem with a name of 'a\2eb'.

We have used this feature to migrate from a UW imapd based service to a
dovecot based service with (what I believe to be) no user visible
change. [1]

    GE> Is "." allowed in mailbox names when using mbox storage?

Yes, I believe so.

Footnotes:

[1] Except that folders can now contain sub folders and messages.