269433 - "delete" message, filing a message, marking msg junk doesn't remove msg from mail file

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(MailNews Core :: Database, defect)

Description

[John T]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910

I am not using the latest mozilla because 1.8a4 had unusable download problems.
I'm finding a problem with 1.7.3 for Windows that nobody seems to have reported
on. Deleting a message, filing one in a different folder, or marking one as junk
so it should be automatically moved to where the junk goes appears NOT to
physically remove the message from its current folder (mail file). I checked out
this lack of removal by opening a DOS window, reading the file size, removing a
message, and reading the file size again. No change occurred as a result of the
removal, only an update to the file time and date.

My email program is set to file junk mail to a junk folder, and then move it to
the trash after 3 days. It's size should remain fairly constant, depending on
the amount and size of junk mail I get. But it's grown to 80 MB SINCE I'VE BEEN
USING IT because the junk mail is not getting physically deleted. It's only
getting copied to the trash folder, and apparently only getting copied from the
inbox. These specified file moves should physically move the file so its bytes
disappear from the "from" file as well as appearing in the "to" file. If the
program fails to do this, inboxes and junk boxes will grow indefinitely. This is
not what Mozilla (and Thunderbird?) mail should do.

This problem appears to exist with "junk" operations, manual or filtered filing
operations, and "delete" operations. 


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open a DOS window in Windows, go to the mail folders and do a dir of a
selected mail folder to get the filesize and time.
2. Open the same folder in Mozilla mail and delete, file or "junk" a selected
message.
3. Do another DOS dir of the selected folder.
Actual Results:  
I repeatedly noticed that the size didn't change, only the time stamp.


Expected Results:  
The software should have removed the selected message from the original file in
the same operation as copying it to the destination file (junk, trash, etc). I
have no interest in saving a ton of hidden junk mail in my inbox backups, etc. 

It appears that the file operations set a hidden code byte or two indicating
that a message is to be treated as not there. This is not the way the message
folders should be handled, even though writing a little code into a file is
easier than actually deleting a message from a message file. What's the code
indicating that a message is meant to be treated as gone? Is there a command in
Mozilla to make the "deleted" messages re-appear? Where is this documented?

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

file | compact folders removes the deleted messages from the mail store. This
has been this way since Netscape 2.0 all the way through Mozilla Suite and
Thunderbird - it's because we use the berkeley mailbox format. There is an RFE
filed to use a different format...

Comment 2

[John T]

I was unaware of that and have never used that feature. I thought file
compression only zipped what was already there.

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

it's compact (remove unused space, basically), not compression, but yes, it's
not well known.