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I have an export of .eml files which has your standard information like to, from, cc, as well as additional metadata fields like messageid, in-reply-to, references, etc. Based on how i understand the eml starndard, i believe I can make use of message-id, in-reply-to and references to create a converation view

For example, you have the initial message to Bob

MSG-1
message-id: 1
to: Bob
text: hello

Then Bob replies to Anthony, updating the metadata as follows

MSG-2
message-id: 2
in-reply-to: 1
references: 1
to: Anthoy
text: howdy

Then Anthony replies back to bob, updating the metadata as follows

MSG-3
message-id: 4
in-reply-to: 2
references: 1,2
to: Bob
text: Let's do this!

Is this how it works?

Raunak
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    `.eml` is not a standard term. Some utilities use this file name extension for their own proprietary message format. The standard message format is often referred to as RFC822, though that original RFC has been superseded many times oves the years now (the current standard is actually [RFC5322.)](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc5322/) – tripleee Oct 31 '18 at 18:42

1 Answers1

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Yep, that is correct. The only error is that you would not use a ',' between references in the References: header.

If you are looking for an explanation of the algorithm used to "thread" these messages into a conversation-like view, you can read about it at https://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html

jstedfast
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