Heirloom-mailx and Saving to IMAP Folder with Spaces

Question

If I try to save to a message to an IMAP folder with the command save 1 +FOLDER/"Folder withSpaces" in heirloom-mailx, instead of saving, mailx spits out No applicable messages from {Folder/"Folder, withSpaces"}. For folders without spaces, it successfully appends the message to the folder, as desired. Can anyone offer me a clue as to why this is, so that I may fix it? I've googled, but have been unsuccessful in finding an answer. Thanks!

Answer 1

To quote from the mailx manpage:

• An argument can be enclosed between paired double-quotes "" or single-quotes ''; any white space, shell word expansion, or backslash characters within the quotes are treated literally as part of the argument. A double-quote will be treated literally within single-quotes and vice versa. These special properties of the quote marks occur only when they are paired at the beginning and end of the argument. [emphasis added]

So quotes in the middle of an argument don't work (unlike most shells). But you can't say "+FOLDER/Folder withSpaces" either, because the manpage also says:

• If the filename begins with an unquoted plus sign, and the folder variable is defined, the plus sign will be replaced by the value of the folder variable followed by a slash. [emphasis added]

So if you use quotes, the + won't be special anymore. You'll have to fall back to backslash escaping:

save 1 +FOLDER/Folder\ withSpaces

ought to work. (Actually, I'm not certain that "+FOLDER/Folder withSpaces" won't work; you might try it just to see if I've misinterpreted the manpage.)

You might consider renaming the folder, say to Folder_withUnderscore or Folder-withHyphen.

Answer 2

Looking more at the mailx manpage, I noticed the shortcut command, which accomplishes exactly what I wanted. I made a shortcut to the "All Mail" folder in Gmail, e.g. shortcut all "+[Gmail]/All Mail", and then save 1 all appends the message to the "All Mail" folder, as desired.