depends on what you want to do with deletion. yes, after marking a message for deletion numbers are no longer contiguous.
but if you just stat at the start and store the number of messages then, that hardly matters.
if you try to operate on a message marked for deletion, pop3 will ERR.
GrahamC
Ok, so query could return this information to the user
Andreas
ideally, we could iterate over messages, then we wouldn't have to care at all.
GrahamC
What about using either INSERT or WRITE for other commands like UIDL, and TOP and RSET ?
Or, do you still prefer Query?
Andreas
TOP fits nicely into copy/part, I think
UIDL fits nicely into QUERY either way.
RSET is tough :)
GrahamC
and remove
Andreas
DELE is remove or remove/part
GrahamC
but you have to skip to the correct message first
Andreas
remove/part
GrahamC
easy enough to get wrong
Maxim
that's how remove works... it starts at current position, so it should be the same in doing port stuff.
GrahamC
but there's no concept of position in pop
Andreas
that's the problem with trying to press things into the port abstraction :)
maybe a pop3 scheme is better off with pretending to be positional (as in R2), but then you'll probably have to maintain a list of already deleted messages.