Subject: case-insensitivity in LIST and LSUB

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 21:30:03 -0700 (PDT)

The alpha test c-client based IMAP4 server offers a case-insensitive LIST and
LSUB.  It was recently pointed out to me that it has a bug in which the "base"
directory, from which it starts the search, is case-sensitive.  This is
calculated up to the point of the first wildcard.

In other words:
	A01 LIST "" fOo/Bar
will not match foo/bar, but
	A01 LIST "" fOo%/Bar
will.  In the first case, "fOo/" is the base directory, in the second case the
base directory is null.

This will be hard to fix without adversely affecting performance.  Like John,
I'm also staring at the problem of multinational character sets as well.

I've therefore decided to make mailbox names case-sensitive, which is the
standard for UNIX anyway.  John's solution of coercing to lower-case is also a
possibility.  I would have preferred case-insensitivity, but it is case
sensitive in SELECT so it isn't as if this was all that useful.

I would be interested in feedback.  How important is it to you to have mixed
case mailbox names with case-insensitivity in LIST/LSUB?  Would you prefer to
have all names coerced to lower case (or upper case), or do you prefer what I
have done which is to make mailbox names case-sensitive?

---

From: Mike Macgirvin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 1995 09:42:06 -0700 (PDT)

>  I would be interested in feedback.  How important is it to you to have
>  mixed case mailbox names with case-insensitivity in LIST/LSUB?  Would
>  you prefer to have all names coerced to lower case (or upper case), or
>  do you prefer what I have done which is to make mailbox names
>  case-sensitive?

	Case-sensitive. Whether or not the client provides insensitivity should
be a client function.
	My application runs primarily on Unix boxes where users expect case
sensitivity and use various 8-bit charsets routinely. PC clients might wish to
hide this from the user, but without forcing those of use in less restrictive
environments to use the "least common denominator".

mike