Deleting messages

[Joseph Brennan]

--On Friday, April 2, 2010 5:30 PM -0700 Nybbles2Byte 
<nybbles2byte at gmail.com> wrote:

> Okay, I am sure this is stupid question but how do you really delete
> messages. When I delete messages in my email client and then log in to
> see the mailbox through a web program I see that the message are marked
> as deleted but still there.


That's what "delete" does.  It marks the messages deleted.  You can still
undelete them, in case of error.

Then the command "expunge" removes all messages marked deleted.  For no
known reason some clients call this "purge" instead of "expunge".

Joseph Brennan
Columbia University Information Technology