[Tutor] how to get a unique handle on an email?

[Sean 'Shaleh' Perry]

> <FONT FACE="Arial" SIZE=3></FONT><div><FONT FACE="Arial" SIZE=3>I recently
> wrote a little script that deletes all the messages sitting in my email
> client's Trash mailbox from the mail server. It uses poplib, and there's
> really nothing to it. </FONT></div>
> <div>&nbsp;</div>
> <FONT FACE="Arial" SIZE=3></FONT><div><FONT FACE="Arial" SIZE=3>My problem is
> that it occasionally skips a message it should have deleted. I know little of
> email protocols, but I saw the "Message-ID" tag in the header, and I thought
> that would do to uniquely identify any email. But there are some emails that
> *do* seem to have the header and that don't get picked up. Furthermore, there
> are other occasional emails that *don't* seem have one to begin with (mostly
> mass-mailings). So, I have been wondering lately: what do "real" email
> clients use to identify a message? Is it some sort of hash made out of the
> header tags? Is there a module/script to make such a handle? </FONT></div>
> <div>&nbsp;</div>
> <FONT FACE="Arial" SIZE=3></FONT><div><FONT FACE="Arial" SIZE=3>Thanks for
> your help, </FONT></div>

gah, kill the html will you please, this is a public list.

Look at rfc822 and the pop rfc whose number escapes me right now.  The answers
are there.