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 · from:/<regex>/
42 · to:<name-or-address>
44 · subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase>
46 · subject:/<regex>/
48 · attachment:<word>
50 · mimetype:<word>
52 · tag:<tag> (or is:<tag>)
54 · id:<message-id>
56 · thread:<thread-id>
58 · folder:<maildir-folder>
60 · path:<directory-path> or path:<directory-path>/**
62 · date:<since>..<until>
64 · lastmod:<initial-revision>..<final-revision>
68 · property:<key>=<value>
70 The <b>from:</b> prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender of
73 The <b>to:</b> prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any recipient
74 of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).
76 Any term prefixed with <b>subject:</b> will match only text from the subject
77 of an email. Searching for a phrase in the subject is supported by
78 including quotation marks around the phrase, immediately following <b>sub-</b>
81 If notmuch is built with <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processors</b> (see below) the <b>from:</b>
82 and <b>subject</b> prefix can be also used to restrict the results to those
83 whose from/subject value matches a regular expression (see <b>regex</b>(7))
86 notmuch search 'from:/bob@.*[.]example[.]com/'
88 The <b>attachment:</b> prefix can be used to search for specific filenames (or
89 extensions) of attachments to email messages.
91 The <b>mimetype:</b> prefix will be used to match text from the content-types
92 of MIME parts within email messages (as specified by the sender).
94 For <b>tag:</b> and <b>is:</b> valid tag values include <b>inbox</b> and <b>unread</b> by default
95 for new messages added by <b>notmuch</b> <b>new</b> as well as any other tag values
96 added manually with <b>notmuch</b> <b>tag</b>.
98 For <b>id:</b>, message ID values are the literal contents of the Message-ID:
99 header of email messages, but without the '<', '>' delimiters.
101 The <b>thread:</b> prefix can be used with the thread ID values that are gen‐
102 erated internally by notmuch (and do not appear in email messages).
103 These thread ID values can be seen in the first column of output from
104 <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b>
106 The <b>path:</b> prefix searches for email messages that are in particular
107 directories within the mail store. The directory must be specified rel‐
108 ative to the top-level maildir (and without the leading slash). By
109 default, <b>path:</b> matches messages in the specified directory only. The
110 "/**" suffix can be used to match messages in the specified directory
111 and all its subdirectories recursively. <b>path:""</b> matches messages in
112 the root of the mail store and, likewise, <b>path:**</b> matches all messages.
114 The <b>folder:</b> prefix searches for email messages by maildir or MH folder.
115 For MH-style folders, this is equivalent to <b>path:</b>. For maildir, this
116 includes messages in the "new" and "cur" subdirectories. The exact syn‐
117 tax for maildir folders depends on your mail configuration. For
118 maildir++, <b>folder:""</b> matches the inbox folder (which is the root in
119 maildir++), other folder names always start with ".", and nested fold‐
120 ers are separated by "."s, such as <b>folder:.classes.topology</b>. For "file
121 system" maildir, the inbox is typically <b>folder:INBOX</b> and nested folders
122 are separated by slashes, such as <b>folder:classes/topology</b>.
124 Both <b>path:</b> and <b>folder:</b> will find a message if <u>any</u> copy of that message
125 is in the specific directory/folder.
127 The <b>date:</b> prefix can be used to restrict the results to only messages
128 within a particular time range (based on the Date: header) with a range
131 date:<since>..<until>
133 See <b>DATE</b> <b>AND</b> <b>TIME</b> <b>SEARCH</b> below for details on the range expression, and
134 supported syntax for <since> and <until> date and time expressions.
136 The time range can also be specified using timestamps with a syntax of:
138 <initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>
140 Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds since
141 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
143 The <b>lastmod:</b> prefix can be used to restrict the result by the database
144 revision number of when messages were last modified (tags were
145 added/removed or filenames changed). This is usually used in conjunc‐
146 tion with the <b>--uuid</b> argument to <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b> to find messages that
147 have changed since an earlier query.
149 The <b>query:</b> prefix allows queries to refer to previously saved queries
150 added with <a href='../notmuch-config-1/'>notmuch-config</a>(1). Named queries are only available if not‐
151 much is built with <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processors</b> (see below).
153 The <b>property:</b> prefix searches for messages with a particular
154 <key>=<value> property pair. Properties are used internally by notmuch
155 (and extensions) to add metadata to messages. A given key can be
156 present on a given message with several different values.
159 <h3> Operators</h3>
161 In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with
162 Boolean operators (<b>and</b>, <b>or</b>, <b>not</b>, and <b>xor</b>). Each term in the query will
163 be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no explicit operator is
164 provided (except that terms with a common prefix will be implicitly
165 combined with OR). The shorthand '-<term>' can be used for 'not
166 <term>' but unfortunately this does not work at the start of an expres‐
167 sion. Parentheses can also be used to control the combination of the
168 Boolean operators, but will have to be protected from interpretation by
169 the shell, (such as by putting quotation marks around any parenthesized
172 In addition to the standard boolean operators, Xapian provides several
173 operators specific to text searching.
175 notmuch search term1 NEAR term2
177 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2. The
178 threshold can be set like this:
180 notmuch search term1 NEAR/2 term2
184 notmuch search term1 ADJ term2
186 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the
187 same order as in the query. The threshold can be set the same as with
190 notmuch search term1 ADJ/7 term2
193 <h3> Stemming</h3>
195 <b>Stemming</b> in notmuch means that these searches
197 notmuch search detailed
198 notmuch search details
199 notmuch search detail
201 will all return identical results, because Xapian first "reduces" the
202 term to the common stem (here 'detail') and then performs the search.
204 There are two ways to turn this off: a search for a capitalized word
205 will be performed unstemmed, so that one can search for "John" and not
206 get results for "Johnson"; phrase searches are also unstemmed (see
207 below for details). Stemming is currently only supported for English.
208 Searches for words in other languages will be performed unstemmed.
211 <h3> Wildcards</h3>
213 It is possible to use a trailing '*' as a wildcard. A search for
214 'wildc*' will match 'wildcard', 'wildcat', etc.
217 <h3> Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes</h3>
219 Xapian (and hence notmuch) prefixes are either <b>boolean</b>, supporting
220 exact matches like "<u>tag:inbox</u>" or <b>probabilistic</b>, supporting a more
221 flexible <b>term</b> based searching. Certain <b>special</b> prefixes are processed
222 by notmuch in a way not stricly fitting either of Xapian's built in
223 styles. The prefixes currently supported by notmuch are as follows.
226 <b>tag:</b>, <b>id:</b>, <b>thread:</b>, <b>folder:</b>, <b>path:</b>, <b>property:</b>
229 <b>to:</b>, <b>attachment:</b>, <b>mimetype:</b>
232 <b>from:</b>, <b>query:</b>, <b>subject:</b>
235 <h3> Terms and phrases</h3>
237 In general Xapian distinguishes between lists of terms and <b>phrases</b>.
238 Phrases are indicated by double quotes (but beware you probably need to
239 protect those from your shell) and insist that those unstemmed words
240 occur in that order. One useful, but initially surprising feature is
241 that the following are equivalant ways to write the same phrase.
243 · "a list of words"
251 Both parenthesised lists of terms and quoted phrases are ok with proba‐
252 bilisitic prefixes such as <b>to:</b>, <b>from:</b>, and <b>subject:</b>. In particular
258 subject:pizza and subject:free
260 Both of these will match a subject "Free Delicious Pizza" while
262 subject:"pizza free"
267 <h2>DATE AND TIME SEARCH</h2>
269 notmuch understands a variety of standard and natural ways of express‐
270 ing dates and times, both in absolute terms ("2012-10-24") and in rela‐
271 tive terms ("yesterday"). Any number of relative terms can be combined
272 ("1 hour 25 minutes") and an absolute date/time can be combined with
273 relative terms to further adjust it. A non-exhaustive description of
274 the syntax supported for absolute and relative terms is given below.
277 <h3> The range expression</h3>
279 date:<since>..<until>
281 The above expression restricts the results to only messages from
282 <since> to <until>, based on the Date: header.
284 <since> and <until> can describe imprecise times, such as "yesterday".
285 In this case, <since> is taken as the earliest time it could describe
286 (the beginning of yesterday) and <until> is taken as the latest time it
287 could describe (the end of yesterday). Similarly, date:january..febru‐
288 ary matches from the beginning of January to the end of February.
290 date:<expr>..! can be used as a shorthand for date:<expr>..<expr>. The
291 expansion takes place before interpretation, and thus, for example,
292 date:monday..! matches from the beginning of Monday until the end of
293 Monday. With <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processor</b> support (see below), non-range
294 date queries such as date:yesterday will work, but otherwise will give
295 unexpected results; if in doubt use date:yesterday..!
297 Currently, we do not support spaces in range expressions. You can
298 replace the spaces with '_', or (in most cases) '-', or (in some cases)
299 leave the spaces out altogether. Examples in this man page use spaces
302 Open-ended ranges are supported (since Xapian 1.2.1), i.e. it's possi‐
303 ble to specify date:..<until> or date:<since>.. to not limit the start
304 or end time, respectively. Pre-1.2.1 Xapian does not report an error on
305 open ended ranges, but it does not work as expected either.
308 <h3> Relative date and time</h3>
310 [N|number] (years|months|weeks|days|hours|hrs|minutes|mins|sec‐
313 All refer to past, can be repeated and will be accumulated.
315 Units can be abbreviated to any length, with the otherwise ambiguous
316 single m being m for minutes and M for months.
318 Number can also be written out one, two, ..., ten, dozen, hundred.
319 Additionally, the unit may be preceded by "last" or "this" (e.g., "last
320 week" or "this month").
322 When combined with absolute date and time, the relative date and time
323 specification will be relative from the specified absolute date and
326 Examples: 5M2d, two weeks
329 <h3> Supported absolute time formats</h3>
331 · H[H]:MM[:SS] [(am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)]
333 · H[H] (am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)
343 · Examples: 17:05, 5pm
346 <h3> Supported absolute date formats</h3>
360 · D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] Mon[thname] [YYYY]
362 · Mon[thname] D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] [YYYY]
366 Month names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
368 Weekday names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
370 Examples: 2012-07-31, 31-07-2012, 7/31/2012, August 3
373 <h3> Time zones</h3>
379 Some time zone codes, e.g. UTC, EET.
382 <h2>XAPIAN FIELD PROCESSORS</h2>
384 Certain optional features of the notmuch query processor rely on the
385 presence of the Xapian field processor API. You can determine if your
386 notmuch was built against a sufficiently recent version of Xapian by
389 % notmuch config get built_with.field_processor
391 Currently the following features require field processor support:
393 · non-range date queries, e.g. "date:today"
395 · named queries e.g. "query:my_special_query"
397 · regular expression searches, e.g. "subject:/^\[SPAM\]/"
402 <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>
403 <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),
404 <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)
409 Carl Worth and many others
414 2009-2017, Carl Worth and many others