barry@python.org (Barry A. Warsaw) writes:
Mostly historical. When the current arrangement was designed (pre-email package) we had the pickle and a plain text file, so it was convenient to have two separate files. We could probably combine then now except that it's more disruptive than I want for MM2.1. Plus you have to decide whether the metadata will change more often than the message pickle. At one time this was definitely the case, so we could write the (smaller) metadata file quicker and more often than dumping the whole thing out for each change in state.
I'm confused. Currently, MM has a plain text file containing the message headers/body and a marshal containing the metadata.
Are you saying that previously, the metadata was contained in the text file, and the message headers/body in a pickle?
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