How to test for maildir 'folder' in Python?

[Barry Scott]

> On 22 Jan 2022, at 21:26, Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
> 
> I have a script that walks a quite deep tree of mail messages to find
> and archive old messages.  I'm trying to convert it from mbox to
> maildir (as I now store my mail in maildir format).
> 
> So I need to test whether a point I have reached in the hierarchy is a
> maildir mailbox or not.  Using mbox format it's easy because 'folders'
> are directories and mailboxes are files.  However with maildir the
> 'folders' have directories within them so the simple tree walking goes
> down a level too far and finds 'folders' which aren't mailboxes called
> 'cur', 'new' and 'tmp'.
> 
> Is there any 'ready made' way in python to tell whether a directory is
> a maildir mailbox?  If not I suppose I'll simply have to check if
> there are 'cur', 'new' and 'tmp' directories within the directory
> which may or may not be a maildir.

You do not need to walk the tree.

The structure is 
	Maildir/cur, new, tmp - The INBOX
	Maildir/<encoded-mail-folder>/cur, new, tmp

The encoding prefixed with a "." and uses a "." between folder name parts.

An example from my Maildir is ".Python.Users/" for a folder that client
shows as Python/Users

You can see this by doing:

	 ls -a ~/Maildir

Barry

		


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