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Best of the Newsgroups: mbox vs. maildir format

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From: "Tony  Lawrence" <pcu...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: How to convert Maildir to mbox format?
Date: 26 Dec 2006 05:20:36 -0800
Message-ID: <1167139236.240368.215110@i12g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> 
References: <uQ0kh.6762$Zd7.2529@newsfe13.lga> 


Neil Jones wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have used Qmail and my mail was received and maintained in Maildir
> format.  Now I am maintaining all my mail in mbox format so it can be
> easily moved between the mail clients on Windows and Linux.  I have some
> email (Maildir format) that is archived and would like to convert it
> back to mbox format.  Is there any tool (without having to install
> Qmail) that will make this conversion?

Trouble is, there isn't a "mbox format" (see

http://homepages.tesco.net./~J.deBoynePollard/FGA/mail-mbox-formats.html
)

But for a specific app that wants mbox, it's usually easy enough to
examine its peculiarities and write a simple shell script to glom
together mail messages into one "mbox" file.  It will have some method
of distinguishing individual messages, usually triggering on the
initial  "From" and with some way of obfuscatiing any "From's" in the
body of a message.

However, there are variants and even more than the J.deBoynePollard
article mentions.  For example, lovable old SCO used MMDF which had
CTRL-A's separating messages ( see

http://docsrv.sco.com:507/en/man/html.ADM/cnvtmbox.ADM.html ).

But:  you are moving backwards.  Mbox is, was, and remains a lousy
idea.

-- 
Tony Lawrence
Unix/Linux/Mac OS X Resources
http://aplawrence.com