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>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>from:<name-or-address></b> <b>or</b> <b>from:/<regex>/</b>
51 The <b>from:</b> prefix is used to match the name or address of the
52 sender of an email message.
54 <b>to:<name-or-address></b>
55 The <b>to:</b> prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any
56 recipient of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).
58 <b>subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase></b> <b>or</b> <b>subject:/<regex>/</b>
59 Any term prefixed with <b>subject:</b> will match only text from the
60 subject of an email. Searching for a phrase in the subject is
61 supported by including quotation marks around the phrase, imme‐
62 diately following <b>subject:</b>.
64 <b>attachment:<word></b>
65 The <b>attachment:</b> prefix can be used to search for specific file‐
66 names (or extensions) of attachments to email messages.
68 <b>mimetype:<word></b>
69 The <b>mimetype:</b> prefix will be used to match text from the con‐
70 tent-types of MIME parts within email messages (as specified by
73 <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>
74 For <b>tag:</b> and <b>is:</b> valid tag values include <b>inbox</b> and <b>unread</b> by
75 default for new messages added by <b>notmuch</b> <b>new</b> as well as any
76 other tag values added manually with <b>notmuch</b> <b>tag</b>.
78 <b>id:<message-id></b> <b>or</b> <b>mid:<message-id></b> <b>or</b> <b>mid:/<regex>/</b>
79 For <b>id:</b> and <b>mid:</b>, message ID values are the literal contents of
80 the Message-ID: header of email messages, but without the '<',
81 '>' delimiters.
83 <b>thread:<thread-id></b>
84 The <b>thread:</b> prefix can be used with the thread ID values that
85 are generated internally by notmuch (and do not appear in email
86 messages). These thread ID values can be seen in the first col‐
87 umn of output from <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b>
89 <b>thread:{<notmuch</b> <b>query>}</b>
90 If notmuch is built with <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processors</b> (see below),
91 threads may be searched for indirectly by providing an arbitrary
92 notmuch query in <b>{}</b>. For example, the following returns threads
93 containing a message from mallory and one (not necessarily the
94 same message) with Subject containing the word "crypto".
96 % notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory}" and thread:"{subject:crypto}"'
98 The performance of such queries can vary wildly. To understand
99 this, the user should think of the query <b>thread:{<something>}</b> as
100 expanding to all of the thread IDs which match <b><something></b>; not‐
101 much then performs a second search using the expanded query.
103 <b>path:<directory-path></b> <b>or</b> <b>path:<directory-path>/**</b> <b>or</b> <b>path:/<regex>/</b>
104 The <b>path:</b> prefix searches for email messages that are in partic‐
105 ular directories within the mail store. The directory must be
106 specified relative to the top-level maildir (and without the
107 leading slash). By default, <b>path:</b> matches messages in the speci‐
108 fied directory only. The "/**" suffix can be used to match mes‐
109 sages in the specified directory and all its subdirectories
110 recursively. <b>path:""</b> matches messages in the root of the mail
111 store and, likewise, <b>path:**</b> matches all messages.
113 <b>path:</b> will find a message if <u>any</u> copy of that message is in the
116 <b>folder:<maildir-folder></b> <b>or</b> <b>folder:/<regex>/</b>
117 The <b>folder:</b> prefix searches for email messages by maildir or MH
118 folder. For MH-style folders, this is equivalent to <b>path:</b>. For
119 maildir, this includes messages in the "new" and "cur" subdirec‐
120 tories. The exact syntax for maildir folders depends on your
121 mail configuration. For maildir++, <b>folder:""</b> matches the inbox
122 folder (which is the root in maildir++), other folder names
123 always start with ".", and nested folders are separated by "."s,
124 such as <b>folder:.classes.topology</b>. For "file system" maildir, the
125 inbox is typically <b>folder:INBOX</b> and nested folders are separated
126 by slashes, such as <b>folder:classes/topology</b>.
128 <b>folder:</b> will find a message if <u>any</u> copy of that message is in
131 <b>date:<since>..<until></b> <b>or</b> <b>date:<date></b>
132 The <b>date:</b> prefix can be used to restrict the results to only
133 messages within a particular time range (based on the Date:
136 See <b>DATE</b> <b>AND</b> <b>TIME</b> <b>SEARCH</b> below for details on the range expres‐
137 sion, and supported syntax for <since> and <until> date and time
140 The time range can also be specified using timestamps without
141 including the date prefix using a syntax of:
143 <initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>
145 Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds
146 since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. Specifying a time range this way
147 is considered legacy and predates the date prefix.
149 <b>lastmod:<initial-revision>..<final-revision></b>
150 The <b>lastmod:</b> prefix can be used to restrict the result by the
151 database revision number of when messages were last modified
152 (tags were added/removed or filenames changed). This is usually
153 used in conjunction with the <b>--uuid</b> argument to <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b>
154 to find messages that have changed since an earlier query.
156 <b>query:<name></b>
157 The <b>query:</b> prefix allows queries to refer to previously saved
158 queries added with <a href='../notmuch-config-1/'>notmuch-config</a>(1). Named queries are only
159 available if notmuch is built with <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processors</b> (see
162 <b>property:<key>=<value></b>
163 The <b>property:</b> prefix searches for messages with a particular
164 <key>=<value> property pair. Properties are used internally by
165 notmuch (and extensions) to add metadata to messages. A given
166 key can be present on a given message with several different
167 values. See <a href='../notmuch-properties-7/'>notmuch-properties</a>(7) for more details.
170 <h3> Operators</h3>
172 In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with
173 Boolean operators (<b>and</b>, <b>or</b>, <b>not</b>, and <b>xor</b>). Each term in the query will
174 be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no explicit operator is
175 provided (except that terms with a common prefix will be implicitly
176 combined with OR). The shorthand '-<term>' can be used for 'not
177 <term>' but unfortunately this does not work at the start of an expres‐
178 sion. Parentheses can also be used to control the combination of the
179 Boolean operators, but will have to be protected from interpretation by
180 the shell, (such as by putting quotation marks around any parenthesized
183 In addition to the standard boolean operators, Xapian provides several
184 operators specific to text searching.
186 notmuch search term1 NEAR term2
188 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2. The
189 threshold can be set like this:
191 notmuch search term1 NEAR/2 term2
195 notmuch search term1 ADJ term2
197 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the
198 same order as in the query. The threshold can be set the same as with
201 notmuch search term1 ADJ/7 term2
204 <h3> Stemming</h3>
206 <b>Stemming</b> in notmuch means that these searches
208 notmuch search detailed
209 notmuch search details
210 notmuch search detail
212 will all return identical results, because Xapian first "reduces" the
213 term to the common stem (here 'detail') and then performs the search.
215 There are two ways to turn this off: a search for a capitalized word
216 will be performed unstemmed, so that one can search for "John" and not
217 get results for "Johnson"; phrase searches are also unstemmed (see
218 below for details). Stemming is currently only supported for English.
219 Searches for words in other languages will be performed unstemmed.
222 <h3> Wildcards</h3>
224 It is possible to use a trailing '*' as a wildcard. A search for
225 'wildc*' will match 'wildcard', 'wildcat', etc.
228 <h3> Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes</h3>
230 Xapian (and hence notmuch) prefixes are either <b>boolean</b>, supporting
231 exact matches like "<u>tag:inbox</u>" or <b>probabilistic</b>, supporting a more
232 flexible <b>term</b> based searching. Certain <b>special</b> prefixes are processed
233 by notmuch in a way not strictly fitting either of Xapian's built in
234 styles. The prefixes currently supported by notmuch are as follows.
237 <b>tag:</b>, <b>id:</b>, <b>thread:</b>, <b>folder:</b>, <b>path:</b>, <b>property:</b>
240 <b>to:</b>, <b>attachment:</b>, <b>mimetype:</b>
243 <b>from:</b>, <b>query:</b>, <b>subject:</b>
246 <h3> Terms and phrases</h3>
248 In general Xapian distinguishes between lists of terms and <b>phrases</b>.
249 Phrases are indicated by double quotes (but beware you probably need to
250 protect those from your shell) and insist that those unstemmed words
251 occur in that order. One useful, but initially surprising feature is
252 that the following are equivalent ways to write the same phrase.
254 · "a list of words"
262 Both parenthesised lists of terms and quoted phrases are ok with proba‐
263 bilistic prefixes such as <b>to:</b>, <b>from:</b>, and <b>subject:</b>. In particular
269 subject:pizza and subject:free
271 Both of these will match a subject "Free Delicious Pizza" while
273 subject:"pizza free"
278 <h3> Quoting</h3>
280 Double quotes are also used by the notmuch query parser to protect
281 boolean terms, regular expressions, or subqueries containing spaces or
282 other special characters, e.g.
284 tag:"a tag"
286 folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"
288 thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}"
290 As with phrases, you need to protect the double quotes from the shell
293 % notmuch search 'folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"'
294 % notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}" and thread:{to:mallory}'
297 <h2>DATE AND TIME SEARCH</h2>
299 notmuch understands a variety of standard and natural ways of express‐
300 ing dates and times, both in absolute terms ("2012-10-24") and in rela‐
301 tive terms ("yesterday"). Any number of relative terms can be combined
302 ("1 hour 25 minutes") and an absolute date/time can be combined with
303 relative terms to further adjust it. A non-exhaustive description of
304 the syntax supported for absolute and relative terms is given below.
307 <h3> The range expression</h3>
309 date:<since>..<until>
311 The above expression restricts the results to only messages from
312 <since> to <until>, based on the Date: header.
314 <since> and <until> can describe imprecise times, such as "yesterday".
315 In this case, <since> is taken as the earliest time it could describe
316 (the beginning of yesterday) and <until> is taken as the latest time it
317 could describe (the end of yesterday). Similarly, date:january..febru‐
318 ary matches from the beginning of January to the end of February.
320 If specifying a time range using timestamps in conjunction with the
321 date prefix, each timestamp must be preceded by @ (ASCII hex 40). As
322 above, each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds
323 since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. For example:
324 date:@<initial-timestamp>..@<final-timestamp>
326 date:<expr>..! can be used as a shorthand for date:<expr>..<expr>. The
327 expansion takes place before interpretation, and thus, for example,
328 date:monday..! matches from the beginning of Monday until the end of
329 Monday. With <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processor</b> support (see below), non-range
330 date queries such as date:yesterday will work, but otherwise will give
331 unexpected results; if in doubt use date:yesterday..!
333 Currently, we do not support spaces in range expressions. You can
334 replace the spaces with '_', or (in most cases) '-', or (in some cases)
335 leave the spaces out altogether. Examples in this man page use spaces
338 Open-ended ranges are supported (since Xapian 1.2.1), i.e. it's possi‐
339 ble to specify date:..<until> or date:<since>.. to not limit the start
340 or end time, respectively. Pre-1.2.1 Xapian does not report an error on
341 open ended ranges, but it does not work as expected either.
344 <h3> Relative date and time</h3>
346 [N|number] (years|months|weeks|days|hours|hrs|minutes|mins|sec‐
349 All refer to past, can be repeated and will be accumulated.
351 Units can be abbreviated to any length, with the otherwise ambiguous
352 single m being m for minutes and M for months.
354 Number can also be written out one, two, ..., ten, dozen, hundred.
355 Additionally, the unit may be preceded by "last" or "this" (e.g., "last
356 week" or "this month").
358 When combined with absolute date and time, the relative date and time
359 specification will be relative from the specified absolute date and
362 Examples: 5M2d, two weeks
365 <h3> Supported absolute time formats</h3>
367 · H[H]:MM[:SS] [(am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)]
369 · H[H] (am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)
379 · Examples: 17:05, 5pm
382 <h3> Supported absolute date formats</h3>
396 · D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] Mon[thname] [YYYY]
398 · Mon[thname] D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] [YYYY]
402 Month names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
404 Weekday names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
406 Examples: 2012-07-31, 31-07-2012, 7/31/2012, August 3
409 <h3> Time zones</h3>
415 Some time zone codes, e.g. UTC, EET.
418 <h2>XAPIAN FIELD PROCESSORS</h2>
420 Certain optional features of the notmuch query processor rely on the
421 presence of the Xapian field processor API. You can determine if your
422 notmuch was built against a sufficiently recent version of Xapian by
425 % notmuch config get built_with.field_processor
427 Currently the following features require field processor support:
429 · non-range date queries, e.g. "date:today"
431 · named queries e.g. "query:my_special_query"
433 · regular expression searches, e.g. "subject:/^\[SPAM\]/"
435 · thread subqueries, e.g. "thread:{from:bob}"
440 <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>
441 <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),
442 <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>
443 <a href='../notmuch-search-1/'>much-search</a>(1), <b>*notmuch-show</b>(1), <a href='../notmuch-tag-1/'>notmuch-tag</a>(1)
448 Carl Worth and many others
453 2009-2018, Carl Worth and many others