On Tue, 2004-02-10 at 22:38, Kenneth Porter wrote:
I'm currently using mbox and mbx with UW-IMAP, mbox for space efficiency and mbx for folders with lots of messages for time efficiency without a large space cost.
The reason why mbx takes more space is that it uses CR+LF linefeeds instead of just LF..
I've avoided maildir because it has a relatively high space cost; mbox has no inter-message cost while maildir wastes on average half a sector plus an inode for each message.
AFAIK ReiserFS doesn't lose any space (or much).
What other formats are there, and has anyone come up with a good format that gives both good time and space characteristics without sacrificing reliability?
(I'm aware of the file format list in the UW-IMAP distro: http://www.washington.edu/imap/documentation/formats.txt.html)
UW-IMAP's author is thinking of some hybrid format where a single mailbox could be built from multiple files, but a single file could contain multiple messages. I think this could be made to work pretty well and reliably. I don't know more about his plans though, I didn't find any discussion about it in c-client list at least.