NOTMUCH-SEARCH-TERMS(7)

NAME

       notmuch-search-terms - syntax for notmuch queries

SYNOPSIS

       notmuch count [options...]  <search-term>...

       notmuch dump [ <filename> ] [--] [ <search-term>...]

       notmuch search [options...] <search-term>...

       notmuch show [options...] <search-term>...

       notmuch tag +<tag>|-<tag> [...] [--] <search-term>...

DESCRIPTION

       Several notmuch commands accept a common syntax for search terms.

       The  search  terms  can  consist of free-form text (and quoted phrases)
       which  will  match  all  messages  that  contain  all  of   the   given
       terms/phrases in the body, the subject, or any of the sender or recipi-
       ent headers.

       As a special case, a search  string  consisting  of  exactly  a  single
       asterisk ("*") will match all messages.

       In  addition  to free text, the following prefixes can be used to force
       terms to match against specific portions of an email, (where <brackets>
       indicate user-supplied values):

            from:<name-or-address>

            to:<name-or-address>

            subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase>

            attachment:<word>

            tag:<tag> (or is:<tag>)

            id:<message-id>

            thread:<thread-id>

            folder:<directory-path>

       The  from: prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender of
       an email message.

       The to: prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any recipient
       of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).

       Any  term  prefixed with subject: will match only text from the subject
       of an email. Searching for a phrase in  the  subject  is  supported  by
       including quotation marks around the phrase, immediately following sub-
       ject:.

       The attachment: prefix can be used to search for specific filenames (or
       extensions) of attachments to email messages.

       For  tag:  and is: valid tag values include inbox and unread by default
       for new messages added by notmuch new as well as any other  tag  values
       added manually with notmuch tag.

       For  id:, message ID values are the literal contents of the Message-ID:
       header of email messages, but without the '<', '>' delimiters.

       The thread: prefix can be used with the thread ID values that are  gen-
       erated  internally  by  notmuch  (and do not appear in email messages).
       These thread ID values can be seen in the first column of  output  from
       notmuch search

       The  folder:  prefix can be used to search for email message files that
       are contained within particular directories within the mail store. Only
       the  directory  components  below  the top-level mail database path are
       available to be searched.

       In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can  be  combined  with
       Boolean  operators  ( and, or, not , etc.). Each term in the query will
       be implicitly connected by a logical AND if  no  explicit  operator  is
       provided,  (except  that  terms with a common prefix will be implicitly
       combined with OR until we get Xapian defect #402 fixed).

       Parentheses can also be used to control the combination of the  Boolean
       operators,  but  will  have  to be protected from interpretation by the
       shell, (such as by putting quotation  marks  around  any  parenthesized
       expression).

       Finally, results can be restricted to only messages within a particular
       time range, (based on the Date: header) with a syntax of:

            <initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>

       Each timestamp is a number representing the  number  of  seconds  since
       1970-01-01  00:00:00  UTC.  This  is  not  the most convenient means of
       expressing date ranges, but until notmuch is fixed  to  accept  a  more
       convenient  form, one can use the date program to construct timestamps.
       For example, with the bash shell the following syntax would  specify  a
       date range to return messages from 2009-10-01 until the current time:

            $(date +%s -d 2009-10-01)..$(date +%s)

SEE ALSO

       notmuch(1),  notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-dump(1), not-
       much-hooks(5),  notmuch-new(1),  notmuch-reply(1),  notmuch-restore(1),
       notmuch-search(1), notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1)

Notmuch 0.14