Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!pacbell!pbhyf!rob
From: rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: elm destroys links!
Message-ID: <5849@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Date: 27 Jul 89 21:13:45 GMT
References: <924@pcsbst.UUCP> <5823@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> <816@ciss.Dayton.NCR.COM>
Reply-To: rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 34

In article <816@ciss.Dayton.NCR.COM> tmoore@ciss.Dayton.NCR.COM (Tom.Moore@ciss.Dayton.NCR.COM) writes:
+rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo) writes:
+
+>I'm confused. Could you tell us step by step what you do?

+I have had this problem too and would like to see it resolved.
+
+To recreate it:
+
+1.  Link an existing mail folder to a new name.
+2.  Fire up elm.
+3.  Change folders to one of the linked folders.
+4.  Delete a message.
+5.  Quit elm and answer yes to the delete messages question.
+6.  Do an ls -i on the subject folders.  Surprise!


Many thanks for the details.

Being familiar with how elm opens and leaves mail folders, I see no
why around this. When elm leaves a mail folder and the contents have
changed (e.g. at least one message was deleted or saved to another folder),
it needs to recreate the folder with only the remaining messages.

Hmm. If ELM were to fopen([folder], "w") to truncate the existing folder
when recreating it, would that keep the links? A lot of the leavembox()
routine would need to be rewritten to accomodate this possibility, esp.
with mail spool mailboxes, because of the intricacies of the locking
and other conditions.
-- 
Rob Bernardo      ...![backbone]!pacbell!pbhyf!rob -or- rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM
  Product engineer, UNIX/C Reusable Code Library        Editor, "Go `C' UNIX"
  Office: (415) 823-2417                Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, California
  Residence: (415) 827-4301                     R BAR JB, Concord, California