[Dovecot] LIST command -- quoting of folder names

[Timo Sirainen]

On 30.6.2013, at 5.02, Eric Abrahamsen <eric at ericabrahamsen.net> wrote:

> * LIST (\HasChildren) "/" [Gmail]
> * LIST (\HasNoChildren) "/" [Gmail]/Spam
> * LIST (\HasNoChildren) "/" [Gmail]/Starred
> * LIST (\HasNoChildren) "/" [Gmail]/Trash
> * LIST (\HasNoChildren) "/" [Gmail]/Drafts
> * LIST (\HasNoChildren) "/" "[Gmail]/Sent Mail"
> * LIST (\HasNoChildren) "/" [Gmail]/Important
> * LIST (\HasNoChildren) "/" INBOX
> 
> Only "[Gmail]/Sent Mail" is quoted. This is messing up gnus, my MUA,
> which truncates other folder names after the / separator.

RFC 3501:

list            = "LIST" SP mailbox SP list-mailbox
list-mailbox    = 1*list-char / string
list-char       = ATOM-CHAR / list-wildcards / resp-specials
ATOM-CHAR       = <any CHAR except atom-specials>
atom-specials   = "(" / ")" / "{" / SP / CTL / list-wildcards /
                  quoted-specials / resp-specials
list-wildcards  = "%" / "*"
resp-specials   = "]"

Looks to me like all the characters in the mailbox names are list-chars, so this would be a gnus bug. Unless this affects some widely used client I'd rather not change Dovecot to unnecessarily add quotes where they're not needed.

> Examples of testing I've seen online have shown all folder names quoted,
> which would allow things to work correctly here. Is this something I can
> affect with local configuration, or is there some other solution? Would
> removing "LAYOUT=fs" affect this issue?

You can't affect this without modifying source code.