The CHECK command requests a checkpoint of the currently selected mailbox. A checkpoint refers to any implementation-dependent housekeeping associated with the mailbox (e.g., resolving the server's in-memory state of the mailbox with the state on its disk) that is not normally executed as part of each command. A checkpoint MAY take a non-instantaneous amount of real time to complete. If a server implementation has no such housekeeping considerations, CHECK is equivalent to NOOP. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2060#section-6.4.1