Weird Mailboxes..

[synthetickittie]

For about the past moth or a little longer in mail.app there have been these weird mailboxes under all the normal ones. Under the final normal one, Trash, there have been new ones with names like .cshrc, .emacs, .login, and a few other ones. Over the time that they have been there I have fixed permissions numerous times and they remain there. Anyone ever have this happen or know what could be wrong? I could just delete them all by control-click and press delete mailbox but didn't know if they are folders that are important that I shouldn't delete.

[synthetickittie]

anyone? Im completely lost here..

[tjwett]

i get extra mailboxes from time to time also but they have normal names like Trash, Sent, etc. they have folder icons. i delete them as well. i have no idea why it does this. i've just chalked it up to the fact that Mail.app is a piece of $h!t. hopefully the Panther version will be better.

[Daveman Deluxe]

If you use IMAP as your mail protocol, those are just folders that get put in your IMAP mailbox by certain Unix mail servers. I thought it was weird when I first saw it, but it's perfectly normal. Deleting the folders will harm nothing, but they'll just get remade.

[synthetickittie]

actually that does make sense because the newest e-mail that I have uses IMAP and all the ones I had set up before that used POP. So your saying if I delete the folders they will just come back and theres not way around that?

[Daveman Deluxe]

It's very likely that such deleted folders will simply come back. The system DID create the directories in the first place, right? :D

[synthetickittie]

yes but why? Is it just a stupid bug in the program that will hopefully be fixed in the upcoming mail.app that is in panther or something else?

[Daveman Deluxe]

It has nothing to do with Mail.app. Those are directories that the IMAP server puts into your mailbox for its own purposes.

Most of them have a period to begin their names, such as ".cshrc" or ".login", right? The leading period indicates to the Unix file system that they are invisible directories. Mail.app, however, does not interperet this since Mail.app is not a file browser, it's an email client.

Perhaps it will be fixed in Panther. Who knows? It's really not a huge deal.

Long story short, those are directories on the server that would be rendered invisible in a Unix file browser due to the leading period. Mail.app, however, is not a file browser and does not interperet the leading period so.

[synthetickittie]

Thanks for the explanation it all makes sense except that one of the names was .emacs. As of right now nothing has come back since deleting them tho.