Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!RODAN.ACS.SYR.EDU!jdpeek
From: jdpeek@RODAN.ACS.SYR.EDU (Jerry Peek)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh
Subject: Re: Recursive Folders in MH: Problem
Message-ID: <9005251616.AA16635@gamera.cns.syr.edu>
Date: 25 May 90 16:16:20 GMT
References: <murthy@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.EDU> <41433@cornell.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: jdpeek@rodan.acs.syr.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 32

> ...what I want is a way to
> tell MH to not look for messages in a folder when it has found a
> subfolder, and not look for folders in folder where it has found a
> message...

Well, a quick-and-dirty way to do that is by feeding the output of folders
to grep -v, like this:
	% folders | grep -v 'has   no messages'
it won't show lines for folders that are empty.  Count the blanks carefully.

BTW, the folder(1) man page under MH6.6 says that:
	lsproc:              Program to list the contents of a folder
but the mh-profile(5) man page doesn't list any "lsproc."  What is it?
(I don't have source code handy.)


> Also, is it possible to get MH to compress/uncompress messages
> automatically?

I wrote a set of shell scripts called "zrefile", "zscan", and "zfolders"
that handle compressed "tar" archives of MH messages.  I've used them for
months now, and they seem to work fine.  They're sort of slow, but they
sure save a lot of disk space because:
	- all the messages are glued into one file, so each message
	  doesn't necessarily consume a whole block of disk space
	- the compression squeezes all the extra padding and crud out
	  of the "tar" file.
No guarantees that they'll work for you, but I'd be glad to send a shar file
of them to anyone who wants them.

--Jerry Peek; Syracuse University Academic Computing Services; Syracuse, NY
  jdpeek@rodan.acs.syr.edu, JDPEEK@SUNRISE.BITNET        +1 315 443-3995