Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Looking at the rfc, the % character isn't valid in the flags, but it has
> char syntax for the `read' command, so substing \ with % before reading
> should do the trick (and be really fast).

I did a timing comparison between my Dec 2009 version of Gnus and
current git when entering an IMAP group with about 6500 articles.

Dec 2009:  11.1 seconds
git:       10.8 seconds

Great!

With the patch below applied, the time reduces further to 10.4 seconds.
But I don't know if it will break things for others.  (I've used it for
several months now without noticing a problem.)

Interestingly, with my Dec 2009 version, the patch below reduces the
time from 11.1 to 10.5 seconds, a bigger change than with git, and
almost matching the git+patch time.

Did the older nnimap.el use the read trick?  If not, then it must have
been more efficient in some other way to come so close to the time
that the current version uses.

Dan