dovecot - Oct 2010 - Dovecot's maildir format / is rm safe

Is it considered 'safe' to delete directly from a dovecot Maildir? I 
mean things of the form:

    rm Maildir/cur/1288062016.M581217P9422.alpha,S=1873,W=1900:2,S

The wiki tells me 'If you wish to modify them in any way, create a new 
message instead and expunge the old one. ' but it doesn't mention 
deleted files.

Specifically I'm wondering what happens with:
    dovecot.index
    dovecot.index.cache
    dovecot.index.log
    dovecot-uidlist

Since (http://wiki.dovecot.org/IndexFiles) tells me these files index 
each message is there a chance of Dovecot breaking badly if it can't 
find them? Is it intelligent enough to automatically update the above 
files when it finds a missing message file? Would simply deleting the 4 
files be appropriate?

I have users with 4 gig mailboxes so I really wouldn't want to be 
deleting those files in a script every night if its a long winded 
process to regenerate them.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Ian

On 26.10.2010, at 21.05, ian at comtek.co.uk wrote:
> Is it considered 'safe' to delete directly from a dovecot Maildir?
I mean things of the form:
> 
>   rm Maildir/cur/1288062016.M581217P9422.alpha,S=1873,W=1900:2,S
Yes.
> Specifically I'm wondering what happens with:
>   dovecot.index
>   dovecot.index.cache
>   dovecot.index.log
>   dovecot-uidlist
> 
> Since (http://wiki.dovecot.org/IndexFiles) tells me these files index each
message is there a chance of Dovecot breaking badly if it can't find them?
No.
> Is it intelligent enough to automatically update the above files when it
finds a missing message file?
Yes.
> Would simply deleting the 4 files be appropriate?
Don't do that. And if you ever do decide to delete any dovecot.index* files,
just don't delete dovecot-uidlist or the clients will have to redownload
mails.