Deleting Expired Mail

Deleting Expired Mail

[Eric Swenson]

I'm still confused about how the expiring and deleting works for mail
groups.  I'm running Gnus 5.2.22.  What I'd like to have happen is to
either manually or via some automatic rules, be able to mark messages
as expirable and then with no further action on my part, after a
certain period of time, have these messages actually expired and
deleted from my mail file.  I know that messages I mark with "E" can
be manually deleted from my mail file with the 'B ESC C-e" command but
I don't want to have to remember to type this in all my (many) mail
groups.  

I assume what I want is possible and every once in a while in some
groups, when I exit the group, instead of seeing "Expiring articles" I
see a message like "Deleting article NNN".  

Would someone please explain this process to me.  I have looked at the
Gnus 5.1 info pages (but don't have TeX so cannot build info pages for
the current version) and still do not understand this expiration
thing.

Thanks.  -- Eric

Re: Deleting Expired Mail

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Eric Swenson <ejs@borland.com> writes:

> Would someone please explain this process to me.

The process is simple.  When an expirable article reaches a certain
age, it is deleted.  That's all.

The expiry is done (by default) from the
`gnus-summary-prepare-exit-hook' hook.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@ifi.uio.no * Lars Ingebrigtsen

Re: Deleting Expired Mail

[Joe Wells]

>>>>> "Lars" == Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no> writes:

  Lars> When an expirable article reaches a certain age, it is deleted.

Is this "age" the amount of time since the message reached you or the
amount of time since it was marked expirable?

-- 
Joe Wells <jbw@cs.bu.edu>

Re: Deleting Expired Mail

[Kai Grossjohann]

>>>>> "Lars" == Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no> writes:

  Lars> When an expirable article reaches a certain age, it is
  Lars> deleted.

>>>>> On 14 Jul 1996 16:38:41 -0400, Joe Wells <jbw@cs.bu.edu> said:

  Joe> Is this "age" the amount of time since the message reached you
  Joe> or the amount of time since it was marked expirable?

For nnml, this is the modified-time of the underlying file.  (For nnmh
too, I guess.)  I don't know what time is being used for other
backends, though.  AFAIK this area is considered to be open for
improvement -- IMHO using the modified-time of the file is a
suboptimal solution.

kai
-- 
Life is hard and then you die.

Re: Deleting Expired Mail

[Kai Grossjohann]

>>>>> On 12 Jul 1996 12:55:55 +0000, Eric Swenson <ejs@borland.com>
>>>>> said:

  Eric> [...]  I know that messages I mark with "E" can be manually
  Eric> deleted from my mail file with the 'B ESC C-e" command but I
  Eric> don't want to have to remember to type this in all my (many)
  Eric> mail groups.  [...]

Here's what I have:

  (define-key gnus-group-mode-map "E" 'gnus-group-expire-all-groups)

Before I go to lunch, I just hit `E' in the group buffer and articles
are expired (read: deleted) from all groups.

This is not what you asked for, but that's what I use.  Maybe you even
like it?

kai
-- 
Life is hard and then you die.