Mail::Box

The main difference between other mail-folder handlers and Mail::Box is the detail of abstraction, which could simplify future extention.

Performance gains are achieved by delay-loading, except when your application requires all messages anyhow. Then you only benefit from the C-parser (to be implemented).

Furthermore, Mail::Box prefers messages --which have to be written to a new folder, for instance when a folder-update takes place-- to be copied byte-by-byte from the source folder. This avoids accidental changes, and is quite much faster. Only when a message has been modified, it must be re-composed from memory structures.

There is a manager object (Mail::Box::Manager), which is the first module to look at when you start using the module. One manager maintains all the open folders in your program. It also tries to auto-detect the type of folder when you specify a name only. Next to that, the manager maintains discussion-threads via the creation of one or more Mail::Box::Threads objects.