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 0.13.2