I am trying to write a utility to remove empty maildir mailboxes. It sounds like this should be very simple but it's proving really difficult. I'm doing this on a Fedora 7 system with python 2.5. The first question is how to detect whether a directory is a maildir mailbox. The following code snippet *never* says that a directory is not a maildir:- try: x = mailbox.Maildir(dirpath, None, False) except: print dirpath, "is not a maildir" The "x = mailbox.Maildir(dirpath, None, False)" always succeeds even when dirpath is most definitely *not* a maildir (i.e. it doesn't have cur, new and tmp sub-directories). It's only when you try calling a method of x that an exception results. The second question is how to manage a hierarchy of directories with maildirs in them. For example I have:- Mail Mail/bcs Mail/ben Mail/cg Mail/spam Mail/usenet Where bcs ben cg spam usenet are maildir mailboxes, I can't get python's mailbox.Maildir to do anything useful with them at all. My test program currently is:- #!/usr/bin/python # # # Remove empty maildir mailboxes # import mailbox import os.path import sys def checkDir(dummy, dirpath, filelist): print "Directory is ", dirpath try: x = mailbox.Maildir(dirpath, None, False).list_folders() except: print dirpath, "is not a maildir" return for msg in x: print msg for d in sys.argv[1:]: if os.path.isdir(d): os.path.walk(d, checkDir, None) It would seem that the list_folders() method only works with the Courier style maildirs where the diretory name of the maildir starts with a dot. Is there *any* way I can get python to access maildirs which are not named using this (IMHO stupid) convention? I know my test program is far from complete but I can't get it to do anything sensible at present. -- Chris Green

<tinnews@isbd.co.uk> wrote: >Is there *any* way I can get python to access maildirs >which are not named using this (IMHO stupid) convention? Well, the mailbox module doesn't support deleting mailboxes, so I'm not sure why you want to use it. Since you also seem to have a better idea of what your maildirs look like, why not just use the lower level file functions directly? Something like: def remove_empty_maildir(dirname): expected = set(["cur", "new", "tmp"]) ents = set(os.listdir(dirname)) if ents != expected: if expected.issubset(ents): raise error, "unexpected subdirs in maildir" raise error, "not a maildir" subdirs = [os.path.join(dirname, d) for d in expected] for d in subdirs: if len(os.listdir(d)) != 0: return False for d in subdirs: os.rmdir(d) os.rmdir(dirname) return True Your case is presumably different somehow, so you'll have to update and fix this completely untested code if you want to use it. Ross Ridge -- l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU [oo][oo] rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca -()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rridge/ db //

Ross Ridge <rridge@caffeine.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote: > <tinnews@isbd.co.uk> wrote: > >Is there *any* way I can get python to access maildirs > >which are not named using this (IMHO stupid) convention? > > Well, the mailbox module doesn't support deleting mailboxes, so I'm not > sure why you want to use it. I was hoping to be able to use it for other things as well as deleting mailboxes. > Since you also seem to have a better idea > of what your maildirs look like, why not just use the lower level file > functions directly? Something like: > > def remove_empty_maildir(dirname): > expected = set(["cur", "new", "tmp"]) > ents = set(os.listdir(dirname)) > if ents != expected: > if expected.issubset(ents): > raise error, "unexpected subdirs in maildir" > raise error, "not a maildir" > subdirs = [os.path.join(dirname, d) > for d in expected] > for d in subdirs: > if len(os.listdir(d)) != 0: > return False > for d in subdirs: > os.rmdir(d) > os.rmdir(dirname) > return True > > Your case is presumably different somehow, so you'll have to update and > fix this completely untested code if you want to use it. > I guess I will have to do something like this but the problem is more subtle than that, what if another program writes a new message to the mailbox just after you've checked that cur, new and tmp are all empty? The whole point of maildir is that locking isn't needed and I was hoping that the maildir() object in python would encapsulate correct handling of the maildir including deletion. As it is I will have to write code to do the correct handling, presumably one checks the new directory last before deleting the whole maildir and, if the deletion fails, someone must have put something there. -- Chris Green