Re: [Nmh-workers] Slowdown with a Populated Folder.

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Ken,

> > `mark -s foo -d all' gives an error if sequence foo doesn't exist,
> > at least with this old version.  Consequently, another mark is
> > needed first, the one above, to detect if the sequence exists.  A
> > more useful interface would cut the number of userspace commands
> > that need to run, and thus the number of getdents.
> 
> It looks like "mark -s foo -zero -d all" does what you want?

Yes, that's handy, thanks.  ~/bin/mhseqrm altered to use it.
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/nmh.git/tree/man/mark.man#n95 covers
the case where a sequence exists;  perhaps this could be added there.

Looking at some of the others uses of ~/bin/mhseqexists, I find

    mhseqexists lp && mark -seq lpsave -zero -add lp
    # ...
    if mhseqexists lpsave; then
        mark -seq lp -zero -add lpsave
        mhseqrm lpsave
    fi

It would be nice if that could be

    mark -newswitch -seq lpsave -zero -add lp
    # ...
    mark -newswitch -seq lp -zero -add lpsave

where an unknown sequence being added is treated as empty.  We already
have, as you've shown, the ability to "create" an empty sequence that
doesn't get saved.

    todelete=$(
        for seq in foo bar xyzzy; do
            mhseqexists $seq && echo $seq
        done
    )
    test "$todelete" && mark -seq i -delete $todelete

Again, unknown sequences being empty would give

    mark -newswitch -seq i -delete foo bar xyzzy

Cheers, Ralph.