How to program round this poplib error?

[dieter]

cl at isbd.net writes:

> I have a (fairly simple) Python program that scans through a
> 'catchall' E-Mail address for things that *might* be for me.  It sends
> anything that could be for me to my main E-Mail and discards the rest.
>
> However I *occasionally* get an error from it as follows:-
>
>     Traceback (most recent call last):
>       File "/home/chris/.mutt/bin/getCatchall.py", line 65, in <module>
>         pop3.dele(i+1)
>       File "/usr/lib/python2.7/poplib.py", line 240, in dele
>         return self._shortcmd('DELE %s' % which)
>       File "/usr/lib/python2.7/poplib.py", line 160, in _shortcmd
>         return self._getresp()
>       File "/usr/lib/python2.7/poplib.py", line 132, in _getresp
>         resp, o = self._getline()
>       File "/usr/lib/python2.7/poplib.py", line 377, in _getline
>         raise error_proto('line too long')
>     poplib.error_proto: line too long
>
>
> Does anyone have any idea how I can program around this somehow?

This is bug "https://bugs.python.org/issue23906".

Following a recommendation from "Laura Creighton", I work around it
by

import poplib; poplib._MAXLINE=50000