Thank you for the help.  I wondered if I could reiterate my question somewhat.

I understand how the hashed maildir gets formed. 

However, there is also a database entry (one field of which contains the maldir stamed at that time etc; very convenient). 

I wonder then, in the "tools" directory, the bash script creates a SQL file, which you then manually (or automatically) source into MySQL, etc. 

So, how does this single SQL query generate the maildir, physically on the disk?  Is there a cron job that often picks up new SQL queries, and generates the maildir?  Or some other method? 

I've been able to use that script (and port it to suit my app suite), and after the SQL query is injected, the maildir magically appears.  No iredadmin utilized (though when the panel is used the sane functionality occurs).  So I figure the SQL query is the jist of it, but something else is happening behind the scenes, etc),

I'm just wondering how that works.

Thanks again for helping me with the learning curve