mailbox.MMDF

class mailbox.MMDF(path, factory=None, create=True)

A subclass of Mailbox for mailboxes in MMDF format. Parameter factory is a callable object that accepts a file-like message representation (which behaves as if opened in binary mode) and returns a custom representation. If factory is None, MMDFMessage is used as the default message representation. If create is True, the mailbox is created if it does not exist.

MMDF is a single-file mailbox format invented for the Multichannel Memorandum Distribution Facility, a mail transfer agent. Each message is in the same form as an mbox message but is bracketed before and after by lines containing four Control-A ('\001') characters. As with the mbox format, the beginning of each message is indicated by a line whose first five characters are “From ”, but additional occurrences of “From ” are not transformed to “>From ” when storing messages because the extra message separator lines prevent mistaking such occurrences for the starts of subsequent messages.

Some Mailbox methods implemented by MMDF deserve special remarks:

get_file(key)

Using the file after calling flush() or close() on the MMDF instance may yield unpredictable results or raise an exception.

lock()

unlock()

Three locking mechanisms are used—dot locking and, if available, the flock() and lockf() system calls.