POP3 - Using poplib only shows the first few hundred messages in the mailbox

[SteveC]

On Jul 25, 6:07 pm, MRAB <goo... at mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote:
> On Jul 25, 1:18 pm, SteveC <sbc... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello,
>
> > I am trying to use POP3_SSL class of thepoplibmodule to read email
> > from my gmail account.  I can connect just fine using the example herehttp://www.python.org/doc/lib/pop3-example.html
>
> > import getpass,poplib
>
> > M =poplib.POP3('localhost')
> > M.user(getpass.getuser())
> > M.pass_(getpass.getpass())
> > numMessages = len(M.list()[1])
> > for i in range(numMessages):
> >     for j in M.retr(i+1)[1]:
> >         print j
>
> > That is the above sample code from the python doc.  While everything
> > works fine, the problem is that when I use the list() function it only
> > returns about 400 messages starting from the beginning of my inbox.  I
> > have probably 10,000 emails in my gmail account.  I don't see any pop3
> > object functions to "move" around the inbox or anything of the like.
>
> > Could someone point me in the right direction?  I'm sure there must be
> > something simple I am missing.
>
> That's a lot of emails! :-)
>
> I had a quick look atpoplib.py and I couldn't see any limit in the
> code itself. Perhaps it's the gmail server that's doing it. Can you
> retrieve the later messages, eg have you tried M.retr(500)? If you can
> then you could just try retrieving messages beyond what M.list() says
> until it says there's no such message.

Nothing changes when I retrieve the messages it first provides me.
What baffles me is I see tons of examples online doing the same thing:
http://python.about.com/od/simplerscripts/ss/backup_gmail_3.htm

I'm not sure if it could be just a gmail thing either, because then it
would seem that this would be a problem with any pop email client.