Understanding message deletion model

[Kevin J. McCarthy]

On Thu, Nov 10, 2022 at 08:47:44PM -0500, Jason Franklin wrote:
>Now, if I re-open mutt, the message is gone... completely. I'm confused 
>as to why the message was removed even though I typed 'n' at the prompt 
>for whether or not to proceed with the purge.
>
>Are "purging" and "deleting" not the same thing?

According to the IMAP protocol, they are not.  Deleting is marking the 
message with the "deleted" flag, which normally doesn't automatically 
remove it from the mailbox.  Purging (expunging) will remove messages 
marked as "deleted" from the mailbox.

When you answer 'n' at the prompt, Mutt takes care not to issue a 
command that would expunge those messages.  However, some IMAP server 
implementations will automatically remove messages marked with a deleted 
flag anyway.

Gmail, for instance, has a setting, "auto-expunge", to allow the user to 
control this.

-- 
Kevin J. McCarthy
GPG Fingerprint: 8975 A9B3 3AA3 7910 385C  5308 ADEF 7684 8031 6BDA
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