Listescape Plugin

The listescape plugin allows users to use characters in mailboxes names that would otherwise be illegal (due to the underlying mailbox storage).

For example:

• Maildir++ layout disallows using the . character, since it’s used internally as the folder hierarchy separator.

• The ~ character at the beginning of the mailbox name is disallowed, because of the possibility that it gets expanded to user’s home directory.

• The / character is disallowed on POSIX systems.

This plugin allows you to use all of these characters, as long as the virtual separator (i.e. what is set by the separator setting and used as such by the IMAP protocol) is changed to something else, which means that the plugin does not make it possible to use the virtual separator in folder names.

The characters are escaped to the mailbox name as \NN hex codes.

So what is a good hierarchy separator to use?

• . and / are very commonly used and should work everywhere

• \ is used by Exchange, and should also work everywhere (when specifying this in the separator= setting it must be quoted, so one sets separator = "\\")

• ^ is used internally by Thunderbird and causes some trouble with it

Settings

See listescape plugin.

Sample Configuration

Allow . characters with Maildir++ layout when virtual hierarchy separator is changed to / (it could be anything else except . itself):

mail_plugins = $mail_plugins listescape

namespace private {
  separator = /
  inbox = yes
}

plugin {
  listescape_char = "\\"
}