[lug] grep as imap client?

[Daniel Webb]

On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 05:23:58PM -0700, Dean Brissinger wrote:

>     However, imap is smart enough to build-in these search features.  A
> good GUI mail client can do the searching using the IMAP interface in a
> very fast way.  Eudora supports this and so does Outlook.  I don't know
> about the browser-based e-mail programs though.  Outlook sometimes needs
> an extra kick to cooperate with non-exchange IMAP servers.

How does this work?  Do they use the IMAP search features?  I have found
IMAP searches to be unreasonably slow for a lot of large folders.  Or do
they build a local index?  Are there any free solutions other than
mairix that can search huge amounts of mail in a few seconds, and
without needing a local copy of the mail?