1 <h1>NOTMUCH-SEARCH-TERMS(7)</h1>
5 notmuch-search-terms - syntax for notmuch queries
10 <b>notmuch</b> <b>count</b> [option ...] <<u>search-term</u>> ...
12 <b>notmuch</b> <b>dump</b> [--format=(batch-tag|sup)] [--] [--output=<<u>file</u>>] [--]
13 [<<u>search-term</u>> ...]
15 <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b> [option ...] <<u>search-term</u>> ...
17 <b>notmuch</b> <b>show</b> [option ...] <<u>search-term</u>> ...
19 <b>notmuch</b> <b>tag</b> +<<u>tag</u>> ... -<<u>tag</u>> [--] <<u>search-term</u>> ...
24 Several notmuch commands accept a common syntax for search terms.
26 The search terms can consist of free-form text (and quoted phrases)
27 which will match all messages that contain all of the given
28 terms/phrases in the body, the subject, or any of the sender or recipi‐
31 As a special case, a search string consisting of exactly a single
32 asterisk ("*") will match all messages.
34 In addition to free text, the following prefixes can be used to force
35 terms to match against specific portions of an email, (where <brackets>
36 indicate user-supplied values):
38 · from:<name-or-address>
40 · to:<name-or-address>
42 · subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase>
44 · attachment:<word>
46 · mimetype:<word>
48 · tag:<tag> (or is:<tag>)
50 · id:<message-id>
52 · thread:<thread-id>
54 · folder:<maildir-folder>
56 · path:<directory-path> or path:<directory-path>/**
58 · date:<since>..<until>
60 · lastmod:<initial-revision>..<final-revision>
62 The <b>from:</b> prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender of
65 The <b>to:</b> prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any recipient
66 of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).
68 Any term prefixed with <b>subject:</b> will match only text from the subject
69 of an email. Searching for a phrase in the subject is supported by
70 including quotation marks around the phrase, immediately following <b>sub-</b>
73 The <b>attachment:</b> prefix can be used to search for specific filenames (or
74 extensions) of attachments to email messages.
76 The <b>mimetype:</b> prefix will be used to match text from the content-types
77 of MIME parts within email messages (as specified by the sender).
79 For <b>tag:</b> and <b>is:</b> valid tag values include <b>inbox</b> and <b>unread</b> by default
80 for new messages added by <b>notmuch</b> <b>new</b> as well as any other tag values
81 added manually with <b>notmuch</b> <b>tag</b>.
83 For <b>id:</b>, message ID values are the literal contents of the Message-ID:
84 header of email messages, but without the '<', '>' delimiters.
86 The <b>thread:</b> prefix can be used with the thread ID values that are gen‐
87 erated internally by notmuch (and do not appear in email messages).
88 These thread ID values can be seen in the first column of output from
89 <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b>
91 The <b>path:</b> prefix searches for email messages that are in particular
92 directories within the mail store. The directory must be specified rel‐
93 ative to the top-level maildir (and without the leading slash). By
94 default, <b>path:</b> matches messages in the specified directory only. The
95 "/**" suffix can be used to match messages in the specified directory
96 and all its subdirectories recursively. <b>path:""</b> matches messages in
97 the root of the mail store and, likewise, <b>path:**</b> matches all messages.
99 The <b>folder:</b> prefix searches for email messages by maildir or MH folder.
100 For MH-style folders, this is equivalent to <b>path:</b>. For maildir, this
101 includes messages in the "new" and "cur" subdirectories. The exact syn‐
102 tax for maildir folders depends on your mail configuration. For
103 maildir++, <b>folder:""</b> matches the inbox folder (which is the root in
104 maildir++), other folder names always start with ".", and nested fold‐
105 ers are separated by "."s, such as <b>folder:.classes.topology</b>. For "file
106 system" maildir, the inbox is typically <b>folder:INBOX</b> and nested folders
107 are separated by slashes, such as <b>folder:classes/topology</b>.
109 Both <b>path:</b> and <b>folder:</b> will find a message if <u>any</u> copy of that message
110 is in the specific directory/folder.
112 The <b>date:</b> prefix can be used to restrict the results to only messages
113 within a particular time range (based on the Date: header) with a range
116 date:<since>..<until>
118 See <b>DATE</b> <b>AND</b> <b>TIME</b> <b>SEARCH</b> below for details on the range expression, and
119 supported syntax for <since> and <until> date and time expressions.
121 The time range can also be specified using timestamps with a syntax of:
123 <initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>
125 Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds since
126 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
128 The <b>lastmod:</b> prefix can be used to restrict the result by the database
129 revision number of when messages were last modified (tags were
130 added/removed or filenames changed). This is usually used in conjunc‐
131 tion with the <b>--uuid</b> argument to <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b> to find messages that
132 have changed since an earlier query.
135 <h3> Operators</h3>
137 In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with
138 Boolean operators (<b>and</b>, <b>or</b>, <b>not</b>, and <b>xor</b>). Each term in the query will
139 be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no explicit operator is
140 provided (except that terms with a common prefix will be implicitly
141 combined with OR). The shorthand '-<term>' can be used for 'not
142 <term>' but unfortunately this does not work at the start of an expres‐
143 sion. Parentheses can also be used to control the combination of the
144 Boolean operators, but will have to be protected from interpretation by
145 the shell, (such as by putting quotation marks around any parenthesized
148 In addition to the standard boolean operators, Xapian provides several
149 operators specific to text searching.
151 notmuch search term1 NEAR term2
153 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2. The
154 threshold can be set like this:
156 notmuch search term1 NEAR/2 term2
160 notmuch search term1 ADJ term2
162 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the
163 same order as in the query. The threshold can be set the same as with
166 notmuch search term1 ADJ/7 term2
169 <h3> Stemming</h3>
171 <b>Stemming</b> in notmuch means that these searches
173 notmuch search detailed
174 notmuch search details
175 notmuch search detail
177 will all return identical results, because Xapian first "reduces" the
178 term to the common stem (here 'detail') and then performs the search.
180 There are two ways to turn this off: a search for a capitalized word
181 will be performed unstemmed, so that one can search for "John" and not
182 get results for "Johnson"; phrase searches are also unstemmed (see
183 below for details). Stemming is currently only supported for English.
184 Searches for words in other languages will be performed unstemmed.
187 <h3> Wildcards</h3>
189 It is possible to use a trailing '*' as a wildcard. A search for
190 'wildc*' will match 'wildcard', 'wildcat', etc.
193 <h3> Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes</h3>
195 Xapian (and hence notmuch) prefixes are either <b>boolean</b>, supporting
196 exact matches like "<u>tag:inbox</u>" or <b>probabilistic</b>, supporting a more
197 flexible <b>term</b> based searching. The prefixes currently supported by not‐
200 ┌───────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
202 ├───────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
205 │ <b>thread:</b> <b>folder:</b> │ <b>subject:</b> <b>attach‐</b> │
206 │ <b>path:</b> │ <b>ment:</b> <b>mimetype:</b> │
207 └───────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
210 <h3> Terms and phrases</h3>
212 In general Xapian distinguishes between lists of terms and <b>phrases</b>.
213 Phrases are indicated by double quotes (but beware you probably need to
214 protect those from your shell) and insist that those unstemmed words
215 occur in that order. One useful, but initially surprising feature is
216 that the following are equivalant ways to write the same phrase.
218 · "a list of words"
226 Both parenthesised lists of terms and quoted phrases are ok with proba‐
227 bilisitic prefixes such as <b>to:</b>, <b>from:</b>, and <b>subject:</b>. In particular
233 subject:pizza and subject:free
235 Both of these will match a subject "Free Delicious Pizza" while
237 subject:"pizza free"
242 <h2>DATE AND TIME SEARCH</h2>
244 notmuch understands a variety of standard and natural ways of express‐
245 ing dates and times, both in absolute terms ("2012-10-24") and in rela‐
246 tive terms ("yesterday"). Any number of relative terms can be combined
247 ("1 hour 25 minutes") and an absolute date/time can be combined with
248 relative terms to further adjust it. A non-exhaustive description of
249 the syntax supported for absolute and relative terms is given below.
252 <h3> The range expression</h3>
254 date:<since>..<until>
256 The above expression restricts the results to only messages from
257 <since> to <until>, based on the Date: header.
259 <since> and <until> can describe imprecise times, such as "yesterday".
260 In this case, <since> is taken as the earliest time it could describe
261 (the beginning of yesterday) and <until> is taken as the latest time it
262 could describe (the end of yesterday). Similarly, date:january..febru‐
263 ary matches from the beginning of January to the end of February.
265 date:<expr>..! can be used as a shorthand for date:<expr>..<expr>. The
266 expansion takes place before interpretation, and thus, for example,
267 date:monday..! matches from the beginning of Monday until the end of
268 Monday. (Note that entering date:<expr> without "..", for example
269 date:yesterday, won't work, as it's not interpreted as a range expres‐
270 sion at all. Again, use date:yesterday..!)
272 Currently, we do not support spaces in range expressions. You can
273 replace the spaces with '_', or (in most cases) '-', or (in some cases)
274 leave the spaces out altogether. Examples in this man page use spaces
277 Open-ended ranges are supported (since Xapian 1.2.1), i.e. it's possi‐
278 ble to specify date:..<until> or date:<since>.. to not limit the start
279 or end time, respectively. Pre-1.2.1 Xapian does not report an error on
280 open ended ranges, but it does not work as expected either.
283 <h3> Relative date and time</h3>
285 [N|number] (years|months|weeks|days|hours|hrs|minutes|mins|sec‐
288 All refer to past, can be repeated and will be accumulated.
290 Units can be abbreviated to any length, with the otherwise ambiguous
291 single m being m for minutes and M for months.
293 Number can also be written out one, two, ..., ten, dozen, hundred.
294 Additionally, the unit may be preceded by "last" or "this" (e.g., "last
295 week" or "this month").
297 When combined with absolute date and time, the relative date and time
298 specification will be relative from the specified absolute date and
301 Examples: 5M2d, two weeks
304 <h3> Supported absolute time formats</h3>
306 · H[H]:MM[:SS] [(am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)]
308 · H[H] (am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)
318 · Examples: 17:05, 5pm
321 <h3> Supported absolute date formats</h3>
335 · D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] Mon[thname] [YYYY]
337 · Mon[thname] D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] [YYYY]
341 Month names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
343 Weekday names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
345 Examples: 2012-07-31, 31-07-2012, 7/31/2012, August 3
348 <h3> Time zones</h3>
354 Some time zone codes, e.g. UTC, EET.
359 <a href='../notmuch-1/'>notmuch</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-config-1/'>notmuch-config</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-count-1/'>notmuch-count</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-dump-1/'>notmuch-dump</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-hooks-5/'>not‐</a>
360 <a href='../notmuch-hooks-5/'>much-hooks</a>(5), <a href='../notmuch-insert-1/'>notmuch-insert</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-new-1/'>notmuch-new</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-reply-1/'>notmuch-reply</a>(1),
361 <a href='../notmuch-restore-1/'>notmuch-restore</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-search-1/'>notmuch-search</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-show-1/'>notmuch-show</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-tag-1/'>notmuch-tag</a>(1)
366 Carl Worth and many others
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