[Info-vax] Indexed file read question

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <6201a1cf-6177-40bc-9052-dd148f5be59bn at googlegroups.com>,
Hein RMS van den Heuvel <heinvandenheuvel at gmail.com> writes: 

> You have... Remember VMSmail? 

I've been using VMS MAIL for almost 30 years.  I have experience with 
Outlook, Lotus Notes, elm, pine, various web-based email stuff, unix 
mail, and so on.  VMS MAIL makes stuff I do often easy, some of which
might not even be possible with other programs, for example 

   MAIL> DIR/SINCE=<date1>/FROM=<address>/SUB=<subject>/BEF=<date2>/TO=<address2>

and so on.  The fact that the headers and start of each message are in 
the indexed file makes it quick to page through stuff; the rest of the 
message in the external file is read only if needed.

I have many mail files in several directories on a few disks.  I can use 
VMS MAIL files from other systems just via SET FILE after copying them 
tomy cluster.

Years ago, I read about the following interesting idea here.  Someone 
liked to keep all the messages in one MAIL file (rather than having many 
MAIL files as I do) so that he could use SEARCH and various DIRECTORY 
commands to find anything.  However, this became a problem when the 
number of external MAIL$* files became too many for good directory 
performance.  So he created subdirectories based on years (and perhaps 
months) and renamed the MAIL$* files to the appropriate directories.  He 
then used SET FILE/ENTER to create a hard link to the main MAIL file in 
each subdirectory.  He could then use DIR to find what he wanted and if 
MAIL said that the external file couldn't be found, just did SET FILE 
[.<subdirector>] and then it could be found.