[Info-vax] naming convention in VMS MAIL

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-12-23 22:06:41 +0000, Hein RMS van den Heuvel said:

> On Wednesday, December 19, 2018 at 4:25:53 PM UTC-5, Phillip Helbig 
> (undress to reply) wrote:
>> VMS MAIL has files like MAIL$45870BB2000500B0.MAI;1.  The digits are 
>> not random, but are related to (at least) the date and time.  What is 
>> the exact format?  Has it changed in the last 25 years?
> 
> Hmm, I don't know why our friend Steve start to waffle about API's, 
> opaqueness, performance and such. The question was highly specific. 
> "What is the exact format". There is no suggestion Philips wants to do 
> something useful with that. Perhaps just curious.

Phillip has a predilection for asking specific questions that are only 
tangentially related to the actual requirements and issues.

In this case, the only typical reason to be asking for the format of 
the opaque filename is the creation of a tool to rebuild the mail 
database, and tools for that already exist.

So I post these sorts of answers, seeking to draw out the actual and 
intended question.

And as the very next reply here has shown, he's followed his usual 
pattern yet again.

Now for this case and absent an add-on search tool and beyond what MAIL 
itself can provide for searching, the brute-force:

EXTRACT/ALL of the messages and then SEARCH.   A similarly ugly 
approach works well for text and help libraries, too.

And if there was a requirement for implementing a search function, then 
the MAIL$ callable API is the appropriate path for that.  Not the 
filename processing.  Apps using the API will more likely survive 
whatever might happen to the MAIL data store in the future.


-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC