RFC 2180 (rfc2180) - Page 3 of 14
IMAP4 Multi-Accessed Mailbox Practice
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 2180 IMAP4 Multi-Accessed Mailbox Practice July 1997
3.2. The server MAY allow the DELETE command of a multi-accessed
mailbox, but keep the information in the mailbox available for
those clients that currently have access to the mailbox.
When all clients have finished accessing the mailbox, it is
permanently removed. For clients that do not already have access to
the mailbox, the 'ghosted' mailbox would not be available. For
example, it would not be returned to these clients in a subsequent
LIST or LSUB command and would not be a valid mailbox argument to any
other IMAP command until the reference count of clients accessing the
mailbox reached 0.
In some cases, this behavior may not be desirable. For example if
someone created a mailbox with offensive or sensitive information,
one might prefer to have the mailbox deleted and all access to the
information contained within removed immediately, rather than
continuing to allow access until the client closes the mailbox.
Furthermore, this behavior, may prevent 'recycling' of the same
mailbox name until all clients have finished accessing the original
mailbox.
Example:
C1: A001 DELETE FOO
S1: A001 OK Mailbox FOO is deleted.
C2: B001 STORE 1 +FLAGS (\Seen)
S2: * 1 FETCH FLAGS (\Seen)
S2: B001 OK STORE completed
C3: C001 STATUS FOO (MESSAGES)
S3: C001 NO Mailbox does not exist
C3: C002 CREATE FOO
S3: C002 NO Mailbox FOO is still in use. Try again later.
Gahrns Informational