Re: [patch] gnus.el::gnus-invalid-group-regexp - Support IMAP

[Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>]

Reiner Steib <4.uce.03.r.s@nurfuerspam.de> writes:

> On Tue, Aug 19 2003, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>
>> A potential problem may be if you create, e.g., a nnml or nnfolder
>> group with the name containing '/'.  Does it work?  With Agent/Caching
>> too?  Does it do what users expect?  With all
>> nnmail-use-long-file-names settings?  No problems with having two
>> groups 'foo' and 'foo/bar'?  Many questions.
>
> The patch you committed had some problems, IMHO:
>
> - (format "foo" "bar" var1 var2) is not valid, should be
>   (format "foo bar" var1 var2).
>
> - The warning is not easy to read in the echo area and there should be
>   a more forceful warning.

Yup, thanks.

> - The problem that we were discussing was only the character `/' in
>   IMAP groups.  I don't think it's a good idea to let the user create
>   _any_ invalid group, e.g. with [: `'\"] and even empty group names.

All of those characters are valid in IMAP, and since some IMAP servers
export regular file systems ($HOME/), I think it is even likely that
people have group names containing some of those characters.

OTOH if we allow ':' the user is pretty much required to use a
secondary select method for that group, otherwise it will confuse the
Gnus group name functions.  I.e., is 'nnimap:foo' the group
'nnimap:foo' on the primary method, or the group 'foo' on a secondary
nnimap method?  OTTH, I don't think we should try to forbid this too
much, most people have nnimap as a secondary select method, and in
that case things will work fine.  A warning and a question seems safe
enough.