MBOX-Line: From dw at thedave.ca  Wed Sep  9 19:45:39 2020
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Dave Warren <dw@thedave.ca>
Date: Wed Sep  9 19:46:07 2020
Subject: [Imap-protocol] Any valid use case for COPY besides moving
 messages?
In-Reply-To: <CAPacwgy_1WJd5TLRDbykTnzfwv9hgcTLzBQZte5=bMRK-RUFLQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPacwgy_1WJd5TLRDbykTnzfwv9hgcTLzBQZte5=bMRK-RUFLQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <e4a7a54e-9b62-e245-6aff-9f21697fd03c@thedave.ca>

On 2020-09-09 01:27, Andris Reinman wrote:
> As the subject states, is there actually any valid use case these days 
> for COPY to just copy messages instead of being a poor substitute for 
> MOVE (that is COPY+EXPUNGE)?

The use case is copying a message, rather than moving it.

I admit many/most users just move messages and in fact some mail 
interfaces don't have an easy copy button, some omit it completely. If 
you control the interface and want to drop the copy button, I wouldn't 
be thrilled but I could accept it. But I believe you're talking about 
silently and unexpectedly deleting a user's email.

I will sometimes copy a bunch of messages into a temporary folder for a 
specific purpose. Perhaps they're related to something I am working on 
but not part of a single thread (or selected parts of a much larger 
thread), perhaps they're all requiring action/attention, maybe I'm going 
to share that folder. But I *always* want the original content sorted in 
the longterm place they live and I'll nuke that temporary folder once 
I'm done with it. And admittedly this is not something I do especially 
frequently either.

If my messages were silently discarded from their original folder, I 
would be both logging it as a defect and very quickly switching to a 
email service that doesn't lose email unexpectedly.

(Full disclosure: $DAYJOB has a product that only stores a single 
instance of a message within a mailbox -- But there is no risk because 
there is no copy action that fails silently, it simply doesn't exist, 
and nothing other than an obvious "X" delete button will delete a message).

