There is nothing in cache that needs to be kept. On reading your question I figured you are using Linux as on windows the cache is not even in the same folder as the profile. There is an option in Thunderbird to clear the cache and to override the automatic cache management which is set as a percentage of the disk size. So perhaps you might want to use those settings instead of writing a program that will probably not work well with Thunderbird.

Thanks Matt. That's an interesting reply. I am using Linux. I have scoured thunderbird for the options you suggested. I actually did it before deciding to do my own thing. I can't find any reference concerning cache management. I might be looking in the wrong places. Cache management is better and easier than progging. I will look again. Thanks again. Peter

well I use Tools > settings on windows. Knowing how the Linux maintainers like to roll their own everything I am not sure where you would look for Preferences/Options/Settings. There was a time some distributions had them on the edit menu.

Once you locate them, search for cache

Hi Matt. I've done those. There's all sorts of things about junk mail but not a single reference about cache. I'll keep looking for a while. I didn't see "tools" until now. Nothing there. There might be something staring me in the face and I can't see it. Perhaps I'll check for a later version of thunderbird. Thanks again. Peter

Found it. It comes under General/Disk space. I didn't scroll the page far enough up. Tut. Thank you very much, you have saved me days of progging(Perhaps not days) Peter