Home

mboxrd

mboxrd is a mailbox file format, a variant of the classic mbox format used to store multiple email messages in a single text file. In mbox-style mailboxes, messages are stored sequentially, and each message begins with a line that starts with From followed by the envelope sender and the date. This line serves as a delimiter that separates messages within the file. The remainder of the content for that message consists of the headers and the body, up to the next delimiter line.

mboxrd differs from some other mbox variants in how it handles literal lines that could be mistaken

Compatibility and usage: mboxrd has been implemented by various Unix mail programs and libraries, including parts

See also: mbox, Maildir, mailbox formats.

for
message
delimiters.
To
preserve
lines
in
a
message
body
that
begin
with
From,
mboxrd
uses
an
escaping
convention,
typically
prefixing
such
lines
with
a
greater-than
sign
(>)
so
they
are
not
interpreted
as
new
message
boundaries
during
parsing.
Implementations
may
vary
in
the
exact
escaping
details,
but
the
core
idea
is
to
maintain
message
boundaries
while
allowing
arbitrary
body
content.
of
the
GNU
Mailutils
ecosystem
and
related
tools.
It
is
one
of
several
historical
mbox
variants
that
addressed
delimiter-related
issues
and
portability
across
tools.
In
contemporary
practice,
many
systems
have
migrated
toward
other
mailbox
formats,
such
as
Maildir,
or
to
newer
variants
with
different
escaping
rules,
but
mboxrd
remains
part
of
the
historical
landscape
of
Unix
email
storage
formats.