On Jul 03 2015, Greg Troxel <gdt@lexort.com> wrote:
> Nikolaus Rath <Nikolaus@rath.org> writes:
>
>> It's really pretty simple. There is no concept of a trash folder in
>> IMAP. Deleting a message means marking it with the \Deleted flag. The UA
>> is expected to take that into account when showing the mailbox contents
>> (e.g. by hiding such messsages or showing them crossed out). A message
>> can be physically deleted by "expunging" it (that would correspond to
>> emptying the trash).
>
> OK, but it seems many MUAs have a notion of moving messages to a trash
> folder instead of just IMAP deletion.
>
> Do MUAs that behave the way you say have  "trash" mailbox in the UI
> that is  really the set of messages in other mailboxes (or inbox)
> that have the \Deleted flag set?

Theoretically they could, in practice I don't know any MUA that does
this. They all have a trash mailbox in the imap account, and move
messages there instead of deleting them.

>> Any trash folder in an IMAP mailbox is a totally ordinary folder, and if
>> there are messages in it it means that they have been moved there (i.e.,
>> not deleted). To empty the trash, you still have to mark the message as
>> \Deleted, *and* then expunge it.
>
> But I empty trash by total-expire in gnus, on the trash mailbox :-)

That's the same thing. By default, deleting in Gnus means setting the
\Delete flag *and* immediately running expunge. But I've submitted
another patch that changes this, so that you can skip the expunge step. 


Best,
-Nikolaus

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