MBOX-Line: From janssen at parc.com  Mon Mar 12 16:29:26 2007
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Bill Janssen <janssen@parc.com>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:38 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] SEARCH restricted to one mailbox?  Extensions?
Message-ID: <07Mar12.152936pst."57996"@synergy1.parc.xerox.com>

I basically want to be able to do searches across my entire mail
database, instead of just folder-by-folder, and I'm wondering how to
plaster that into the protocol.  I suppose one way would be to present
all the mail as one tricky folder which normally contains one message,
but responds to SEARCH over it by suddenly filling itself with the
results of the search, sending an untagged EXISTS, and sending them
back to the client.  The mailbox would gradually fill up with search
results; I'd have to expire them and send EXPUNGES periodically.

Are there any protocol extensions I should know about which support
this kind of thing?

Bill

