On 2007/12/25 07:48 (GMT-0800) Randall R Schulz apparently typed:
On Tuesday 25 December 2007 07:29, Afan Pasalic wrote:
The "reallyReallyBigFile:" is actually Inbox file from Thunderbird. When I was leaving the old company 2 years ago I just copied whole T-bird to backup HD. Now, I'm looking for one very important email and the only place left is this huge Inbox file.
$> file Inbox Inbox: data
You see. It's _not_ a text file!
We've been trying to get you to tell us things about this file. Now we know, it's not a text file and it's not going to be amenable to the usual text processing tools.
IMO, it _is_ basically a text file. But at that size the most likely reasons it _is_ that 1.6G size, and looks like non-text, are: 1-it includes multipart encoded mail (which usually means either binary or HTML attachments are included; in most cases from spam) 2-it either has never or has rarely been compacted (actual removal of "deleted" mail, and actual removal of detached or deleted attachments) 3-filtering hasn't been used to divert much or any of it to other folders In essence, even though it is text at heart, multipart encoding makes it a hybrid of text and binary. I frequently search through these files via my OFM's internal text editor's search function for email addresses, or for portions of email content I would otherwise have no idea where to look for, to copy and paste into some newer email. The main lesson here is mozilla email apps do not automatically compact deletions and moves, which means their users, in order to recover a large amount of otherwise wasted memory space, should periodically select to "compact folders" from the file menu. -- Jesus Christ, the reason for the season. Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org