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> [--gzip] [--format=(batch-tag|sup)] [--output=<<u>file</u>>] [--]
13 [<<u>search-term</u>> ...]
15 <b>notmuch</b> <b>reindex</b> [option ...] <<u>search-term</u>> ...
17 <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b> [option ...] <<u>search-term</u>> ...
19 <b>notmuch</b> <b>show</b> [option ...] <<u>search-term</u>> ...
21 <b>notmuch</b> <b>tag</b> +<<u>tag</u>> ... -<<u>tag</u>> [--] <<u>search-term</u>> ...
26 Several notmuch commands accept a common syntax for search terms.
28 The search terms can consist of free-form text (and quoted phrases)
29 which will match all messages that contain all of the given
30 terms/phrases in the body, the subject, or any of the sender or recipi‐
33 As a special case, a search string consisting of exactly a single
34 asterisk ("*") will match all messages.
37 <h3> Search prefixes</h3>
39 In addition to free text, the following prefixes can be used to force
40 terms to match against specific portions of an email, (where <brackets>
41 indicate user-supplied values).
43 If notmuch is built with <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processors</b> (see below) some of
44 the prefixes with <regex> forms can be also used to restrict the
45 results to those whose value matches a regular expression (see
46 <b>regex</b>(7)) delimited with //, for example:
48 notmuch search 'from:"/bob@.*[.]example[.]com/"'
50 <b>body:<word-or-quoted-phrase></b>
51 Match terms in the body of messages.
53 <b>from:<name-or-address></b> <b>or</b> <b>from:/<regex>/</b>
54 The <b>from:</b> prefix is used to match the name or address of the
55 sender of an email message.
57 <b>to:<name-or-address></b>
58 The <b>to:</b> prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any
59 recipient of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).
61 <b>subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase></b> <b>or</b> <b>subject:/<regex>/</b>
62 Any term prefixed with <b>subject:</b> will match only text from the
63 subject of an email. Searching for a phrase in the subject is
64 supported by including quotation marks around the phrase, imme‐
65 diately following <b>subject:</b>.
67 <b>attachment:<word></b>
68 The <b>attachment:</b> prefix can be used to search for specific file‐
69 names (or extensions) of attachments to email messages.
71 <b>mimetype:<word></b>
72 The <b>mimetype:</b> prefix will be used to match text from the con‐
73 tent-types of MIME parts within email messages (as specified by
76 <b>tag:<tag></b> <b>or</b> <b>tag:/<regex>/</b> <b>or</b> <b>is:<tag></b> <b>or</b> <b>is:/<regex>/</b>
77 For <b>tag:</b> and <b>is:</b> valid tag values include <b>inbox</b> and <b>unread</b> by
78 default for new messages added by <b>notmuch</b> <b>new</b> as well as any
79 other tag values added manually with <b>notmuch</b> <b>tag</b>.
81 <b>id:<message-id></b> <b>or</b> <b>mid:<message-id></b> <b>or</b> <b>mid:/<regex>/</b>
82 For <b>id:</b> and <b>mid:</b>, message ID values are the literal contents of
83 the Message-ID: header of email messages, but without the '<',
84 '>' delimiters.
86 <b>thread:<thread-id></b>
87 The <b>thread:</b> prefix can be used with the thread ID values that
88 are generated internally by notmuch (and do not appear in email
89 messages). These thread ID values can be seen in the first col‐
90 umn of output from <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b>
92 <b>thread:{<notmuch</b> <b>query>}</b>
93 If notmuch is built with <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processors</b> (see below),
94 threads may be searched for indirectly by providing an arbitrary
95 notmuch query in <b>{}</b>. For example, the following returns threads
96 containing a message from mallory and one (not necessarily the
97 same message) with Subject containing the word "crypto".
99 % notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory}" and thread:"{subject:crypto}"'
101 The performance of such queries can vary wildly. To understand
102 this, the user should think of the query <b>thread:{<something>}</b> as
103 expanding to all of the thread IDs which match <b><something></b>; not‐
104 much then performs a second search using the expanded query.
106 <b>path:<directory-path></b> <b>or</b> <b>path:<directory-path>/**</b> <b>or</b> <b>path:/<regex>/</b>
107 The <b>path:</b> prefix searches for email messages that are in partic‐
108 ular directories within the mail store. The directory must be
109 specified relative to the top-level maildir (and without the
110 leading slash). By default, <b>path:</b> matches messages in the speci‐
111 fied directory only. The "/**" suffix can be used to match mes‐
112 sages in the specified directory and all its subdirectories
113 recursively. <b>path:""</b> matches messages in the root of the mail
114 store and, likewise, <b>path:**</b> matches all messages.
116 <b>path:</b> will find a message if <u>any</u> copy of that message is in the
119 <b>folder:<maildir-folder></b> <b>or</b> <b>folder:/<regex>/</b>
120 The <b>folder:</b> prefix searches for email messages by maildir or MH
121 folder. For MH-style folders, this is equivalent to <b>path:</b>. For
122 maildir, this includes messages in the "new" and "cur" subdirec‐
123 tories. The exact syntax for maildir folders depends on your
124 mail configuration. For maildir++, <b>folder:""</b> matches the inbox
125 folder (which is the root in maildir++), other folder names
126 always start with ".", and nested folders are separated by "."s,
127 such as <b>folder:.classes.topology</b>. For "file system" maildir, the
128 inbox is typically <b>folder:INBOX</b> and nested folders are separated
129 by slashes, such as <b>folder:classes/topology</b>.
131 <b>folder:</b> will find a message if <u>any</u> copy of that message is in
134 <b>date:<since>..<until></b> <b>or</b> <b>date:<date></b>
135 The <b>date:</b> prefix can be used to restrict the results to only
136 messages within a particular time range (based on the Date:
139 See <b>DATE</b> <b>AND</b> <b>TIME</b> <b>SEARCH</b> below for details on the range expres‐
140 sion, and supported syntax for <since> and <until> date and time
143 The time range can also be specified using timestamps without
144 including the date prefix using a syntax of:
146 <initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>
148 Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds
149 since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. Specifying a time range this way
150 is considered legacy and predates the date prefix.
152 <b>lastmod:<initial-revision>..<final-revision></b>
153 The <b>lastmod:</b> prefix can be used to restrict the result by the
154 database revision number of when messages were last modified
155 (tags were added/removed or filenames changed). This is usually
156 used in conjunction with the <b>--uuid</b> argument to <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b>
157 to find messages that have changed since an earlier query.
159 <b>query:<name></b>
160 The <b>query:</b> prefix allows queries to refer to previously saved
161 queries added with <a href='../notmuch-config-1/'>notmuch-config</a>(1). Named queries are only
162 available if notmuch is built with <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processors</b> (see
165 <b>property:<key>=<value></b>
166 The <b>property:</b> prefix searches for messages with a particular
167 <key>=<value> property pair. Properties are used internally by
168 notmuch (and extensions) to add metadata to messages. A given
169 key can be present on a given message with several different
170 values. See <a href='../notmuch-properties-7/'>notmuch-properties</a>(7) for more details.
172 User defined prefixes are also supported, see <a href='../notmuch-config-1/'>notmuch-config</a>(1) for
176 <h3> Operators</h3>
178 In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with
179 Boolean operators (<b>and</b>, <b>or</b>, <b>not</b>, and <b>xor</b>). Each term in the query will
180 be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no explicit operator is
181 provided (except that terms with a common prefix will be implicitly
182 combined with OR). The shorthand '-<term>' can be used for 'not
183 <term>' but unfortunately this does not work at the start of an expres‐
184 sion. Parentheses can also be used to control the combination of the
185 Boolean operators, but will have to be protected from interpretation by
186 the shell, (such as by putting quotation marks around any parenthesized
189 In addition to the standard boolean operators, Xapian provides several
190 operators specific to text searching.
192 notmuch search term1 NEAR term2
194 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2. The
195 threshold can be set like this:
197 notmuch search term1 NEAR/2 term2
201 notmuch search term1 ADJ term2
203 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the
204 same order as in the query. The threshold can be set the same as with
207 notmuch search term1 ADJ/7 term2
210 <h3> Stemming</h3>
212 <b>Stemming</b> in notmuch means that these searches
214 notmuch search detailed
215 notmuch search details
216 notmuch search detail
218 will all return identical results, because Xapian first "reduces" the
219 term to the common stem (here 'detail') and then performs the search.
221 There are two ways to turn this off: a search for a capitalized word
222 will be performed unstemmed, so that one can search for "John" and not
223 get results for "Johnson"; phrase searches are also unstemmed (see
224 below for details). Stemming is currently only supported for English.
225 Searches for words in other languages will be performed unstemmed.
228 <h3> Wildcards</h3>
230 It is possible to use a trailing '*' as a wildcard. A search for
231 'wildc*' will match 'wildcard', 'wildcat', etc.
234 <h3> Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes</h3>
236 Xapian (and hence notmuch) prefixes are either <b>boolean</b>, supporting
237 exact matches like "<u>tag:inbox</u>" or <b>probabilistic</b>, supporting a more
238 flexible <b>term</b> based searching. Certain <b>special</b> prefixes are processed
239 by notmuch in a way not strictly fitting either of Xapian's built in
240 styles. The prefixes currently supported by notmuch are as follows.
243 <b>tag:</b>, <b>id:</b>, <b>thread:</b>, <b>folder:</b>, <b>path:</b>, <b>property:</b>
246 <b>body:</b>, <b>to:</b>, <b>attachment:</b>, <b>mimetype:</b>
249 <b>from:</b>, <b>query:</b>, <b>subject:</b>
252 <h3> Terms and phrases</h3>
254 In general Xapian distinguishes between lists of terms and <b>phrases</b>.
255 Phrases are indicated by double quotes (but beware you probably need to
256 protect those from your shell) and insist that those unstemmed words
257 occur in that order. One useful, but initially surprising feature is
258 that the following are equivalent ways to write the same phrase.
260 · "a list of words"
268 Both parenthesised lists of terms and quoted phrases are ok with proba‐
269 bilistic prefixes such as <b>to:</b>, <b>from:</b>, and <b>subject:</b>. In particular
275 subject:pizza and subject:free
277 Both of these will match a subject "Free Delicious Pizza" while
279 subject:"pizza free"
284 <h3> Quoting</h3>
286 Double quotes are also used by the notmuch query parser to protect
287 boolean terms, regular expressions, or subqueries containing spaces or
288 other special characters, e.g.
290 tag:"a tag"
292 folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"
294 thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}"
296 As with phrases, you need to protect the double quotes from the shell
299 % notmuch search 'folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"'
300 % notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}" and thread:{to:mallory}'
303 <h2>DATE AND TIME SEARCH</h2>
305 notmuch understands a variety of standard and natural ways of express‐
306 ing dates and times, both in absolute terms ("2012-10-24") and in rela‐
307 tive terms ("yesterday"). Any number of relative terms can be combined
308 ("1 hour 25 minutes") and an absolute date/time can be combined with
309 relative terms to further adjust it. A non-exhaustive description of
310 the syntax supported for absolute and relative terms is given below.
313 <h3> The range expression</h3>
315 date:<since>..<until>
317 The above expression restricts the results to only messages from
318 <since> to <until>, based on the Date: header.
320 <since> and <until> can describe imprecise times, such as "yesterday".
321 In this case, <since> is taken as the earliest time it could describe
322 (the beginning of yesterday) and <until> is taken as the latest time it
323 could describe (the end of yesterday). Similarly, date:january..febru‐
324 ary matches from the beginning of January to the end of February.
326 If specifying a time range using timestamps in conjunction with the
327 date prefix, each timestamp must be preceded by @ (ASCII hex 40). As
328 above, each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds
329 since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. For example:
330 date:@<initial-timestamp>..@<final-timestamp>
332 date:<expr>..! can be used as a shorthand for date:<expr>..<expr>. The
333 expansion takes place before interpretation, and thus, for example,
334 date:monday..! matches from the beginning of Monday until the end of
335 Monday. With <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processor</b> support (see below), non-range
336 date queries such as date:yesterday will work, but otherwise will give
337 unexpected results; if in doubt use date:yesterday..!
339 Currently, we do not support spaces in range expressions. You can
340 replace the spaces with '_', or (in most cases) '-', or (in some cases)
341 leave the spaces out altogether. Examples in this man page use spaces
344 Open-ended ranges are supported (since Xapian 1.2.1), i.e. it's possi‐
345 ble to specify date:..<until> or date:<since>.. to not limit the start
346 or end time, respectively. Pre-1.2.1 Xapian does not report an error on
347 open ended ranges, but it does not work as expected either.
350 <h3> Relative date and time</h3>
352 [N|number] (years|months|weeks|days|hours|hrs|minutes|mins|sec‐
355 All refer to past, can be repeated and will be accumulated.
357 Units can be abbreviated to any length, with the otherwise ambiguous
358 single m being m for minutes and M for months.
360 Number can also be written out one, two, ..., ten, dozen, hundred.
361 Additionally, the unit may be preceded by "last" or "this" (e.g., "last
362 week" or "this month").
364 When combined with absolute date and time, the relative date and time
365 specification will be relative from the specified absolute date and
368 Examples: 5M2d, two weeks
371 <h3> Supported absolute time formats</h3>
373 · H[H]:MM[:SS] [(am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)]
375 · H[H] (am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)
385 · Examples: 17:05, 5pm
388 <h3> Supported absolute date formats</h3>
402 · D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] Mon[thname] [YYYY]
404 · Mon[thname] D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] [YYYY]
408 Month names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
410 Weekday names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
412 Examples: 2012-07-31, 31-07-2012, 7/31/2012, August 3
415 <h3> Time zones</h3>
421 Some time zone codes, e.g. UTC, EET.
424 <h2>XAPIAN FIELD PROCESSORS</h2>
426 Certain optional features of the notmuch query processor rely on the
427 presence of the Xapian field processor API. You can determine if your
428 notmuch was built against a sufficiently recent version of Xapian by
431 % notmuch config get built_with.field_processor
433 Currently the following features require field processor support:
435 · non-range date queries, e.g. "date:today"
437 · named queries e.g. "query:my_special_query"
439 · regular expression searches, e.g. "subject:/^\[SPAM\]/"
441 · thread subqueries, e.g. "thread:{from:bob}"
446 <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>
447 <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-reindex-1/'>notmuch-reindex</a>(1),
448 <b>notmuch-properties</b>(1), <b>*notmuch-reply</b>(1), <a href='../notmuch-restore-1/'>notmuch-restore</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-search-1/'>not‐</a>
449 <a href='../notmuch-search-1/'>much-search</a>(1), <b>*notmuch-show</b>(1), <a href='../notmuch-tag-1/'>notmuch-tag</a>(1)
454 Carl Worth and many others
459 2009-2019, Carl Worth and many others