Re: [Nmh-workers] Is Pick Antiquated?

[paul vixie]

On 2/4/2012 5:40 PM, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> ...
>
> but it avoids the `pick -list echoing 0' issue, the limited number of
> sequences, the need for xargs, and perhaps pick's grammar isn't the
> right one anyway?

pick's grammer is definitely not the right one. the 'pick' approach also
means you can't begin processing a set of messages until after pick has
completed, which is time consuming on huge mail stores and huge message
sets. as with others here i'm perfectly in favour of making pick
redundant as long as we keep it around for compatibility.

On 2/4/2012 5:47 PM, Joel Uckelman wrote:
> Having other nmh command understand pick syntax might be uesful. But
> removing pick would not be. Because message numbers are also filenames,
> pick is handy for generating lists of filenames to be consumed by other
> non-nmh programs.

this draws two comments from me. first, message numbers are relative
file names. i always use mhpath.

second, message numbers are currently file names. if we succeed in
abstracting things correctly, they might refer to imap objects some day.
in which case i suppose that mhpath will emit imap: url's?