[Info-vax] VMS MAIL: order of DELETE

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <qok8eu$6dm$1 at dont-email.me>, "Craig A. Berry"
<craigberry at nospam.mac.com> writes: 

> > Wouldn't it be more efficient to delete the files in reverse order ?
> > 
> > That way, if you are deleting a large number of messages at once,
> > you don't end up having to shuffle down directory blocks which are
> > going to be deleted anyway.
> 
> As far as I can remember, deleting mail messages may or may not involve
> deleting files, depending on the size of the message.  

Right.  I believe that if it is more than 1 (or 3?) blocks, then the 
rest is in an external file.  This is a really, really, really good 
idea, since one can quickly browse through the messages, seeing the main 
headers and the first few lines.  (Of course, RFC 822 headers should be 
at the bottom.)

> And even if the
> order in the file system has anything to do with the order in which
> messages are received (I don't remember how the files get named),

It is basically a timestamp plus some extra stuff.