Nybbles2Byte <nybbles2byte@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Expunge sounds more like a legal term > than anything to do with software and I'm surprised that it became an > official > command as programmers would far more likely think of purge first. > Perhaps a > non-programmer came up with that one. "Expunge" comes from the MM client developed in the 1970s. One of the developers, Mark Crispin, designed the IMAP protocol in 1986, and he carried over the term Expunge as the command to remove messages marked deleted. <http://www.columbia.edu/acis/email/mm.home/mmmanual/8.about.mm.html> I can't think of a good reason not to use the term that the protocol uses, since it is a word people know and using it would make it simpler to discuss commands applicable to any IMAP client. I first saw "purge" used in the mid 1990s. I don't know whether it first appeared in the Exchange Client (the interoffice memo and scheduling client that became Outlook) or Netscape Navigator (one the first GUI IMAP clients). It was an unfamiliar term and I did not understand why it was being used. None of the old email clients used it, nor did the POP or IMAP protocols. Joseph Brennan Columbia University Information Technology ---- Cyrus Home Page: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/ Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html
