MBOX-Line: From David.Harris at pmail.gen.nz  Fri May 23 21:09:43 2014
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: David Harris <David.Harris@pmail.gen.nz>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:52 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] Creating subfolders in Gmail
In-Reply-To: <537FEFE5.4040103@comaxis.com>
References: <537FEFE5.4040103@comaxis.com>
Message-ID: <53801B87.29010.51A00D5@David.Harris.pmail.gen.nz>

On 23 May 2014 at 18:03, Jeff McKay wrote:

> Has something changed with how Gmail handles the hierarchy character
> in the CREATE command? I am sure I had this working at one point, but
> now:
> 
> CREATE "TopLevelFolder/"
> 
> generates "NO hierarchy character ignored"

The server would appear to be in error. See RFC3501, section 6.3.3 ("The 
Create Command"):

      If the mailbox name is suffixed with the server's hierarchy
      separator character (as returned from the server by a LIST
      command), this is a declaration that the client intends to create
      mailbox names under this name in the hierarchy.  Server
      implementations that do not require this declaration MUST ignore
      the declaration.  In any case, the name created is without the
      trailing hierarchy delimiter.

This seems pretty unambiguous to me, but no doubt there's an alternative 
reading I haven't considered (there usually is). I assume GMail actually 
*does* support submailboxes (I don't personally use it)?

Interestingly, the example for section 6.3.3 is an almost exact match to your 
report:

      Example:
         C: A003 CREATE owatagusiam/
         S: A003 OK CREATE completed

Note that there is a reverse condition to this where a server may report a 
mailbox with a trailing hierarchy delimiter as part of a LIST response; I 
confess I've never understood exactly what that means (Exchange used to 
do it and may still do so) - Mark Crispin once explained it to me as having 
some meaning related to a test for existence, but I couldn't grasp what he 
meant.

Cheers!

-- David --

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