[Oberon] Re: POP use of UIDL command ?

[Chris Glur]

Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.mail.misc
news at absamail.co.za writes:

> > It's not clear to me from my RFCs: 1939, 1725, 2449 how the 
> > [list unique IDs of mails still on the server] UIDL is used.

Sam wrote:
> It's for mail clients that cache message's contents.  A mail client that 
> sees a UIDL for the first time recognizes that it's a new message, and will 
> download it.  A mail client that already saw the same UIDL will not need to 
> download its contents again, because it already has it.
> 
> Recording each message's UIDL is still useful even if the mail client always 
> deletes messages, after downloading them from a POP3 maildrop.  If there's 
> an exception that interrupted the download process, messages that were 
> downloaded will still remain on the server (pay careful attention to how 
> DELE and QUIT works); and the next time the client reconnects it will 
> otherwise end up downloading duplicate copies of some of the messages.
> 
> Recording each message UIDLs will prevent that, since the mail client will 
> easily recognize message that it already has, making the POP3 mail download 
> process essentially bulletproof.

-- yes, the delete only happens after a successful 'log out'.

PS. linux groups are quiet strong for inet queries.