dovecot - Nov 2009 - NONEXISTENT status code

I'm going to take exception to the way dovecot (1.2.8) is returning  
the NONEXISTENT response code in certain cases.  For example, these  
transactions:

c: 1 EXAMINE "foo"
S: 1 NO [NONEXISTENT] Mailbox doesn't exist: foo

C: 2 STATUS "foo" (MESSAGES)
S: 2 NO [NONEXISTENT] Mailbox doesn't exist: foo

...don't appear to be the proper usage of NONEXISTENT.

 From RFC 5530[3]:

NONEXISTENT

     The operation attempts to delete something that does not exist.

NONEXISTENT should be used for RENAME or DELETE (also the UID EXPUNGE)  
commands.  Although the textual description is appropriate in the  
above situations - the mailbox truly doesn't exist - this is not what  
the response code indicates.  Under the RFCs, it seems that failure of  
a STATUS or EXAMINE command with a NO response *could* mean the  
mailbox doesn't exist, but there is no method of reporting this via a  
response code.

michael

On Fri, 2009-11-20 at 15:43 -0700, Michael M. Slusarz
wrote:
>  From RFC 5530[3]:
> 
> NONEXISTENT
> 
>      The operation attempts to delete something that does not exist.
> 
> NONEXISTENT should be used for RENAME or DELETE (also the UID EXPUNGE)  
> commands.  
Well, that sucks.. I'll ask Arnt if he had an actual reason for the
above text, but I suppose I'll anyway have to modify Dovecot to
internally separate between NONEXISTENT and NONEXISTENT_DELETE or
something.

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