[Alpine-info] strange imap directory/folder [.] thing

[Patrick J. Collins]

Hi,

I have quite a collection of mail from throughout the years, and
previously when I ran my own mail server, at the beginning of each year, I
would create folders like: collinator-2005 and collinator-2006.. for example,
and I would move all my read-messages and sent-messages from pine into these
folders...

Ok, so I just recently switched webhosts and am having them host my mail now.
And the first thing I noticed is now all of my mailbox files have [.] at the
end of their name..  Like:

inbox[.]
read-messages[.]
sent-messages[.]
etc...

And the folders appear like: 

collinator-2003
collinator-2004

And if I go into them, I see all the read-messages[.], sent-messages[.] mailbox
files.  And at the bottom of the screen alpine says:  "[Now in directory:
{mail.denetron.com:993/ssl/novalidate-cert-user=patrick at collinatorstudios.com}collinatr-2004.]

And so, as 2008 is here, I created a folder called collinator-2007 and moved
all the 2007 messages into that folder.

However, this collinator-2007 shows up as:
collinator-2007[.]   -- which I am assuming means alpine thinks it's a mailbox,
and I go into it and it says "[Folder 'collinator-2007' opened with 0 messages]"

Yet if I select the [.] to the right of collinator-2007, then I see all my
folders..  So my question is-- where is the [.] coming from?

I just tried in the Folder list of alpine doing Add, create directory and
create folder, and both times create a name with a [.] beside it.......

I have asked the system administrator about this problem and he said that he
doesn't see anything different between collinator-2007 and the other folders.  Does anyone
know why this is happening?

Patrick J. Collins
http://collinatorstudios.com