geeky question on read/unread mail

Tony Dietrich td at transoft.demon.co.uk
Mon Jan 3 10:10:25 UTC 2005


On Monday 03 Jan 2005 04:08, Globe Trotter wrote:
> Hi,
>
> How do all these mailers tell whether an e-mail has actually been read or
> not? By that, I mean, how does pine (or sylpheed or whatever) find out if
> an e-mail has actually been read? Please note that I am not asking how they
> indicate whether an e-mail has been read or not (this is different for
> different mailers) but how to they find out whether each e-mail in the
> folder should be classified as unread or read.
>
> This may well depend on format (MH or mbox or the like) but I still wonder
> how this is settled.
>
> Thanks and best wishes!
>
If I understand correctly what you are asking, then the answer is that each 
email reader keeps an internal record of whether you have viewed the emails.

You can verify this by running two separate mail readers pointing at the same 
mail directory ... each reader will show the emails as read/unread depending 
on whether you have seen the email in that particular reader.
-- 
Tony Dietrich
-------------
I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the
whole field to private industry.
  -- Joseph Heller




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