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Author Max Varnar
Recipients Max Varnar, barry, docs@python, r.david.murray
Date 2019-01-19.08:40:17
SpamBayes Score -1.0
Marked as misclassified Yes
Message-id <1547887217.4.0.578077466695.issue35783@roundup.psfhosted.org>
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Content
An example of fetching messages from the mailbox given in "IMAP4 Example" section is incorrect:

typ, data = M.fetch(num, '(RFC822)')
print('Message %s\n%s\n' % (num, data[0][1]))

"fetch" may return server data that was not requested (see "7.4.2.  FETCH Response" section of RFC 3501). In that case "data[0][1]" won't return what user expects.
This is a bad example, that many people repeat and advise to other developers:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13210737/get-only-new-emails-imaplib-and-python
https://gist.github.com/robulouski/7441883
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51098962/check-if-email-inbox-is-empty-imaplib-python3
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21116498/imaplib-not-getting-all-emails-in-folder
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2230037/how-to-fetch-an-email-body-using-imaplib-in-python

I guess, this peculiarity should be clarified in the documentation. I offer to mark this fetching method is not safe and requests careful fetch result parsing.
History
Date User Action Args
2019-01-19 08:40:20Max Varnarsetrecipients: + Max Varnar, barry, r.david.murray, docs@python
2019-01-19 08:40:17Max Varnarsetmessageid: <1547887217.4.0.578077466695.issue35783@roundup.psfhosted.org>
2019-01-19 08:40:17Max Varnarlinkissue35783 messages
2019-01-19 08:40:17Max Varnarcreate