poplib.POP3.list() returns extra value?

[Steve Greenland]

For the poplib.POP3 object, docs say:

list([which])
Request message list, result is in the form (response, ['mesg_num octets',
...]). If which is set, it is the message to list.


But (I've folded the long line):

Python 2.3.5 (#2, May 4 2005, 08:51:39)
[GCC 3.3.5 (Debian 1:3.3.5-12)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.('+OK', ['1 2680', '2 2720', '3 9996', '4 23368', '5 2267', '6 2661', '7
4925', '8 2548', '9 10114', '10 1850', '11 14239', '12 6678', '13 6592',
'14 10011', '15 3554', '16 5764', '17 5080', '18 9998', '19 2056', '20
6354', '21 3031', '22 2868', '23 6325', '24 2566', '25 4827', '26 2995',
'27 2963', '28 2548', '29 9138', '30 2408', '31 2245', '32 2547', '33
2439', '34 9816', '35 2584', '36 10259', '37 1997', '38 4930', '39
1859', '40 9105', '41 6649', '42 6776', '43 2338', '44 17808', '45
4960', '46 1785', '47 2123', '48 2011', '49 9124', '50 1910', '51 1307',
'52 18869', '53 2507', '54 19099', '55 2328', '56 2069', '57 1654', '58
2346', '59 2891', '60 1865', '61 9334'], 548)
Note the trailing ", 548". By symmetry with the POP3.retr() function,
I'll guess that it's the number of octets in the response; it gets
bigger with more messages. I've tried this against three different
servers (popa3d, some version of Exchange, whatever's on RedHat 7.2),
and two versions of python (2.3.5 on Debian sarge, 2.2 on AIX 5.1) and
it's the same on all of them.

It could be that I'm insane, but I'd prefer to believe this is a doc
error that no one ever noticed because everybody uses POP3.list()[1].
You be the judge!

Steve

 

[Jeff Epler]

With a judicious bit of UTSL, that count seems to be the total number of
octets in the reply. This information comes from any user of
_getlongresp(), which actually returns a tuple (resp, list, octets).
These methods would be:
list
retr
top
uidl

I'd consider it a doc bug too. If you feel comfortable doing it, dive
in and improve the documentation of poplib. Submitting a patch to the
patch tracker on sf.net/projects/python is probably the best way to do
this, if you have the necessary knowledge of cvs to produce a patch.

Jeff

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[Steve Greenland]

I'd consider it a doc bug too. If you feel comfortable doing it, dive
in and improve the documentation of poplib. Submitting a patch to the
patch tracker on sf.net/projects/python is probably the best way to do
this, if you have the necessary knowledge of cvs to produce a patch.

Knowledge: yes; Time: maybe. If someone else gets there first, I won't
be offended

Thanks for confirming...

Steve