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>
64 The <b>from:</b> prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender of
67 The <b>to:</b> prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any recipient
68 of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).
70 Any term prefixed with <b>subject:</b> will match only text from the subject
71 of an email. Searching for a phrase in the subject is supported by
72 including quotation marks around the phrase, immediately following <b>sub-</b>
75 The <b>attachment:</b> prefix can be used to search for specific filenames (or
76 extensions) of attachments to email messages.
78 The <b>mimetype:</b> prefix will be used to match text from the content-types
79 of MIME parts within email messages (as specified by the sender).
81 For <b>tag:</b> and <b>is:</b> valid tag values include <b>inbox</b> and <b>unread</b> by default
82 for new messages added by <b>notmuch</b> <b>new</b> as well as any other tag values
83 added manually with <b>notmuch</b> <b>tag</b>.
85 For <b>id:</b>, message ID values are the literal contents of the Message-ID:
86 header of email messages, but without the '<', '>' delimiters.
88 The <b>thread:</b> prefix can be used with the thread ID values that are gen‐
89 erated internally by notmuch (and do not appear in email messages).
90 These thread ID values can be seen in the first column of output from
91 <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b>
93 The <b>path:</b> prefix searches for email messages that are in particular
94 directories within the mail store. The directory must be specified rel‐
95 ative to the top-level maildir (and without the leading slash). By
96 default, <b>path:</b> matches messages in the specified directory only. The
97 "/**" suffix can be used to match messages in the specified directory
98 and all its subdirectories recursively. <b>path:""</b> matches messages in
99 the root of the mail store and, likewise, <b>path:**</b> matches all messages.
101 The <b>folder:</b> prefix searches for email messages by maildir or MH folder.
102 For MH-style folders, this is equivalent to <b>path:</b>. For maildir, this
103 includes messages in the "new" and "cur" subdirectories. The exact syn‐
104 tax for maildir folders depends on your mail configuration. For
105 maildir++, <b>folder:""</b> matches the inbox folder (which is the root in
106 maildir++), other folder names always start with ".", and nested fold‐
107 ers are separated by "."s, such as <b>folder:.classes.topology</b>. For "file
108 system" maildir, the inbox is typically <b>folder:INBOX</b> and nested folders
109 are separated by slashes, such as <b>folder:classes/topology</b>.
111 Both <b>path:</b> and <b>folder:</b> will find a message if <u>any</u> copy of that message
112 is in the specific directory/folder.
114 The <b>date:</b> prefix can be used to restrict the results to only messages
115 within a particular time range (based on the Date: header) with a range
118 date:<since>..<until>
120 See <b>DATE</b> <b>AND</b> <b>TIME</b> <b>SEARCH</b> below for details on the range expression, and
121 supported syntax for <since> and <until> date and time expressions.
123 The time range can also be specified using timestamps with a syntax of:
125 <initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>
127 Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds since
128 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
130 The <b>lastmod:</b> prefix can be used to restrict the result by the database
131 revision number of when messages were last modified (tags were
132 added/removed or filenames changed). This is usually used in conjunc‐
133 tion with the <b>--uuid</b> argument to <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b> to find messages that
134 have changed since an earlier query.
136 The <b>query:</b> prefix allows queries to refer to previously saved queries
137 added with <a href='../notmuch-config-1/'>notmuch-config</a>(1). Named queries are only available if not‐
138 much is built with <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processors</b> (see below).
141 <h3> Operators</h3>
143 In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with
144 Boolean operators (<b>and</b>, <b>or</b>, <b>not</b>, and <b>xor</b>). Each term in the query will
145 be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no explicit operator is
146 provided (except that terms with a common prefix will be implicitly
147 combined with OR). The shorthand '-<term>' can be used for 'not
148 <term>' but unfortunately this does not work at the start of an expres‐
149 sion. Parentheses can also be used to control the combination of the
150 Boolean operators, but will have to be protected from interpretation by
151 the shell, (such as by putting quotation marks around any parenthesized
154 In addition to the standard boolean operators, Xapian provides several
155 operators specific to text searching.
157 notmuch search term1 NEAR term2
159 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2. The
160 threshold can be set like this:
162 notmuch search term1 NEAR/2 term2
166 notmuch search term1 ADJ term2
168 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the
169 same order as in the query. The threshold can be set the same as with
172 notmuch search term1 ADJ/7 term2
175 <h3> Stemming</h3>
177 <b>Stemming</b> in notmuch means that these searches
179 notmuch search detailed
180 notmuch search details
181 notmuch search detail
183 will all return identical results, because Xapian first "reduces" the
184 term to the common stem (here 'detail') and then performs the search.
186 There are two ways to turn this off: a search for a capitalized word
187 will be performed unstemmed, so that one can search for "John" and not
188 get results for "Johnson"; phrase searches are also unstemmed (see
189 below for details). Stemming is currently only supported for English.
190 Searches for words in other languages will be performed unstemmed.
193 <h3> Wildcards</h3>
195 It is possible to use a trailing '*' as a wildcard. A search for
196 'wildc*' will match 'wildcard', 'wildcat', etc.
199 <h3> Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes</h3>
201 Xapian (and hence notmuch) prefixes are either <b>boolean</b>, supporting
202 exact matches like "<u>tag:inbox</u>" or <b>probabilistic</b>, supporting a more
203 flexible <b>term</b> based searching. The prefixes currently supported by not‐
207 <b>tag:</b>, <b>id:</b>, <b>thread:</b>, <b>folder:</b>, <b>path:</b>
210 <b>from:</b>, <b>to:</b>, <b>subject:</b>, <b>attachment:</b>, <b>mimetype:</b>
213 <h3> Terms and phrases</h3>
215 In general Xapian distinguishes between lists of terms and <b>phrases</b>.
216 Phrases are indicated by double quotes (but beware you probably need to
217 protect those from your shell) and insist that those unstemmed words
218 occur in that order. One useful, but initially surprising feature is
219 that the following are equivalant ways to write the same phrase.
221 · "a list of words"
229 Both parenthesised lists of terms and quoted phrases are ok with proba‐
230 bilisitic prefixes such as <b>to:</b>, <b>from:</b>, and <b>subject:</b>. In particular
236 subject:pizza and subject:free
238 Both of these will match a subject "Free Delicious Pizza" while
240 subject:"pizza free"
245 <h2>DATE AND TIME SEARCH</h2>
247 notmuch understands a variety of standard and natural ways of express‐
248 ing dates and times, both in absolute terms ("2012-10-24") and in rela‐
249 tive terms ("yesterday"). Any number of relative terms can be combined
250 ("1 hour 25 minutes") and an absolute date/time can be combined with
251 relative terms to further adjust it. A non-exhaustive description of
252 the syntax supported for absolute and relative terms is given below.
255 <h3> The range expression</h3>
257 date:<since>..<until>
259 The above expression restricts the results to only messages from
260 <since> to <until>, based on the Date: header.
262 <since> and <until> can describe imprecise times, such as "yesterday".
263 In this case, <since> is taken as the earliest time it could describe
264 (the beginning of yesterday) and <until> is taken as the latest time it
265 could describe (the end of yesterday). Similarly, date:january..febru‐
266 ary matches from the beginning of January to the end of February.
268 date:<expr>..! can be used as a shorthand for date:<expr>..<expr>. The
269 expansion takes place before interpretation, and thus, for example,
270 date:monday..! matches from the beginning of Monday until the end of
271 Monday. With <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processor</b> support (see below), non-range
272 date queries such as date:yesterday will work, but otherwise will give
273 unexpected results; if in doubt use date:yesterday..!
275 Currently, we do not support spaces in range expressions. You can
276 replace the spaces with '_', or (in most cases) '-', or (in some cases)
277 leave the spaces out altogether. Examples in this man page use spaces
280 Open-ended ranges are supported (since Xapian 1.2.1), i.e. it's possi‐
281 ble to specify date:..<until> or date:<since>.. to not limit the start
282 or end time, respectively. Pre-1.2.1 Xapian does not report an error on
283 open ended ranges, but it does not work as expected either.
286 <h3> Relative date and time</h3>
288 [N|number] (years|months|weeks|days|hours|hrs|minutes|mins|sec‐
291 All refer to past, can be repeated and will be accumulated.
293 Units can be abbreviated to any length, with the otherwise ambiguous
294 single m being m for minutes and M for months.
296 Number can also be written out one, two, ..., ten, dozen, hundred.
297 Additionally, the unit may be preceded by "last" or "this" (e.g., "last
298 week" or "this month").
300 When combined with absolute date and time, the relative date and time
301 specification will be relative from the specified absolute date and
304 Examples: 5M2d, two weeks
307 <h3> Supported absolute time formats</h3>
309 · H[H]:MM[:SS] [(am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)]
311 · H[H] (am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)
321 · Examples: 17:05, 5pm
324 <h3> Supported absolute date formats</h3>
338 · D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] Mon[thname] [YYYY]
340 · Mon[thname] D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] [YYYY]
344 Month names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
346 Weekday names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
348 Examples: 2012-07-31, 31-07-2012, 7/31/2012, August 3
351 <h3> Time zones</h3>
357 Some time zone codes, e.g. UTC, EET.
360 <h2>XAPIAN FIELD PROCESSORS</h2>
362 Certain optional features of the notmuch query processor rely on the
363 presence of the Xapian field processor API. You can determine if your
364 notmuch was built against a sufficiently recent version of Xapian by
367 % notmuch config get built_with.field_processor
369 Currently the following features require field processor support:
371 · non-range date queries, e.g. "date:today"
373 · named queries e.g. "query:my_special_query"
378 <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>
379 <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),
380 <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)
385 Carl Worth and many others
390 2009-2016, Carl Worth and many others