NOTMUCH-SEARCH-TERMS(7)
NAME
notmuch-search-terms - syntax for notmuch queries
SYNOPSIS
notmuch count [option ...] <search-term> ...
notmuch dump [--gzip] [--format=(batch-tag|sup)] [--output=<file>] [--]
[<search-term> ...]
notmuch reindex [option ...] <search-term> ...
notmuch search [option ...] <search-term> ...
notmuch show [option ...] <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.
Search prefixes
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).
If notmuch is built with Xapian Field Processors (see below) some of
the prefixes with <regex> forms can be also used to restrict the
results to those whose value matches a regular expression (see
regex(7)) delimited with //, for example:
notmuch search 'from:"/bob@.*[.]example[.]com/"'
body:<word-or-quoted-phrase>
Match terms in the body of messages.
from:<name-or-address> or from:/<regex>/
The from: prefix is used to match the name or address of the
sender of an email message.
to:<name-or-address>
The to: prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any
recipient of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).
subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase> or subject:/<regex>/
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, imme‐
diately following subject:.
attachment:<word>
The attachment: prefix can be used to search for specific file‐
names (or extensions) of attachments to email messages.
mimetype:<word>
The mimetype: prefix will be used to match text from the con‐
tent-types of MIME parts within email messages (as specified by
the sender).
tag:<tag> or tag:/<regex>/ or is:<tag> or is:/<regex>/
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.
id:<message-id> or mid:<message-id> or mid:/<regex>/
For id: and mid:, message ID values are the literal contents of
the Message-ID: header of email messages, but without the '<',
'>' delimiters.
thread:<thread-id>
The thread: prefix can be used with the thread ID values that
are generated internally by notmuch (and do not appear in email
messages). These thread ID values can be seen in the first col‐
umn of output from notmuch search
thread:{<notmuch query>}
If notmuch is built with Xapian Field Processors (see below),
threads may be searched for indirectly by providing an arbitrary
notmuch query in {}. For example, the following returns threads
containing a message from mallory and one (not necessarily the
same message) with Subject containing the word "crypto".
% notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory}" and thread:"{subject:crypto}"'
The performance of such queries can vary wildly. To understand
this, the user should think of the query thread:{<something>} as
expanding to all of the thread IDs which match <something>; not‐
much then performs a second search using the expanded query.
path:<directory-path> or path:<directory-path>/** or path:/<regex>/
The path: prefix searches for email messages that are in partic‐
ular directories within the mail store. The directory must be
specified relative to the top-level maildir (and without the
leading slash). By default, path: matches messages in the speci‐
fied directory only. The "/**" suffix can be used to match mes‐
sages in the specified directory and all its subdirectories
recursively. path:"" matches messages in the root of the mail
store and, likewise, path:** matches all messages.
path: will find a message if any copy of that message is in the
specific directory.
folder:<maildir-folder> or folder:/<regex>/
The folder: prefix searches for email messages by maildir or MH
folder. For MH-style folders, this is equivalent to path:. For
maildir, this includes messages in the "new" and "cur" subdirec‐
tories. The exact syntax for maildir folders depends on your
mail configuration. For maildir++, folder:"" matches the inbox
folder (which is the root in maildir++), other folder names
always start with ".", and nested folders are separated by "."s,
such as folder:.classes.topology. For "file system" maildir, the
inbox is typically folder:INBOX and nested folders are separated
by slashes, such as folder:classes/topology.
folder: will find a message if any copy of that message is in
the specific folder.
date:<since>..<until> or date:<date>
The date: prefix can be used to restrict the results to only
messages within a particular time range (based on the Date:
header).
See DATE AND TIME SEARCH below for details on the range expres‐
sion, and supported syntax for <since> and <until> date and time
expressions.
The time range can also be specified using timestamps without
including the date prefix using 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. Specifying a time range this way
is considered legacy and predates the date prefix.
lastmod:<initial-revision>..<final-revision>
The lastmod: prefix can be used to restrict the result by the
database revision number of when messages were last modified
(tags were added/removed or filenames changed). This is usually
used in conjunction with the --uuid argument to notmuch search
to find messages that have changed since an earlier query.
query:<name>
The query: prefix allows queries to refer to previously saved
queries added with notmuch-config(1). Named queries are only
available if notmuch is built with Xapian Field Processors (see
below).
property:<key>=<value>
The property: prefix searches for messages with a particular
<key>=<value> property pair. Properties are used internally by
notmuch (and extensions) to add metadata to messages. A given
key can be present on a given message with several different
values. See notmuch-properties(7) for more details.
User defined prefixes are also supported, see notmuch-config(1) for
details.
Operators
In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with
Boolean operators (and, or, not, and xor). 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). The shorthand '-<term>' can be used for 'not
<term>' but unfortunately this does not work at the start of an expres‐
sion. 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).
In addition to the standard boolean operators, Xapian provides several
operators specific to text searching.
notmuch search term1 NEAR term2
will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2. The
threshold can be set like this:
notmuch search term1 NEAR/2 term2
The search
notmuch search term1 ADJ term2
will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the
same order as in the query. The threshold can be set the same as with
NEAR:
notmuch search term1 ADJ/7 term2
Stemming
Stemming in notmuch means that these searches
notmuch search detailed
notmuch search details
notmuch search detail
will all return identical results, because Xapian first "reduces" the
term to the common stem (here 'detail') and then performs the search.
There are two ways to turn this off: a search for a capitalized word
will be performed unstemmed, so that one can search for "John" and not
get results for "Johnson"; phrase searches are also unstemmed (see
below for details). Stemming is currently only supported for English.
Searches for words in other languages will be performed unstemmed.
Wildcards
It is possible to use a trailing '*' as a wildcard. A search for
'wildc*' will match 'wildcard', 'wildcat', etc.
Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes
Xapian (and hence notmuch) prefixes are either boolean, supporting
exact matches like "tag:inbox" or probabilistic, supporting a more
flexible term based searching. Certain special prefixes are processed
by notmuch in a way not strictly fitting either of Xapian's built in
styles. The prefixes currently supported by notmuch are as follows.
Boolean
tag:, id:, thread:, folder:, path:, property:
Probabilistic
body:, to:, attachment:, mimetype:
Special
from:, query:, subject:
Terms and phrases
In general Xapian distinguishes between lists of terms and phrases.
Phrases are indicated by double quotes (but beware you probably need to
protect those from your shell) and insist that those unstemmed words
occur in that order. One useful, but initially surprising feature is
that the following are equivalent ways to write the same phrase.
· "a list of words"
· a-list-of-words
· a/list/of/words
· a.list.of.words
Both parenthesised lists of terms and quoted phrases are ok with proba‐
bilistic prefixes such as to:, from:, and subject:. In particular
subject:(pizza free)
is equivalent to
subject:pizza and subject:free
Both of these will match a subject "Free Delicious Pizza" while
subject:"pizza free"
will not.
Quoting
Double quotes are also used by the notmuch query parser to protect
boolean terms, regular expressions, or subqueries containing spaces or
other special characters, e.g.
tag:"a tag"
folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"
thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}"
As with phrases, you need to protect the double quotes from the shell
e.g.
% notmuch search 'folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"'
% notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}" and thread:{to:mallory}'
DATE AND TIME SEARCH
notmuch understands a variety of standard and natural ways of express‐
ing dates and times, both in absolute terms ("2012-10-24") and in rela‐
tive terms ("yesterday"). Any number of relative terms can be combined
("1 hour 25 minutes") and an absolute date/time can be combined with
relative terms to further adjust it. A non-exhaustive description of
the syntax supported for absolute and relative terms is given below.
The range expression
date:<since>..<until>
The above expression restricts the results to only messages from
<since> to <until>, based on the Date: header.
<since> and <until> can describe imprecise times, such as "yesterday".
In this case, <since> is taken as the earliest time it could describe
(the beginning of yesterday) and <until> is taken as the latest time it
could describe (the end of yesterday). Similarly, date:january..febru‐
ary matches from the beginning of January to the end of February.
If specifying a time range using timestamps in conjunction with the
date prefix, each timestamp must be preceded by @ (ASCII hex 40). As
above, each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds
since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. For example:
date:@<initial-timestamp>..@<final-timestamp>
date:<expr>..! can be used as a shorthand for date:<expr>..<expr>. The
expansion takes place before interpretation, and thus, for example,
date:monday..! matches from the beginning of Monday until the end of
Monday. With Xapian Field Processor support (see below), non-range
date queries such as date:yesterday will work, but otherwise will give
unexpected results; if in doubt use date:yesterday..!
Currently, we do not support spaces in range expressions. You can
replace the spaces with '_', or (in most cases) '-', or (in some cases)
leave the spaces out altogether. Examples in this man page use spaces
for clarity.
Open-ended ranges are supported (since Xapian 1.2.1), i.e. it's possi‐
ble to specify date:..<until> or date:<since>.. to not limit the start
or end time, respectively. Pre-1.2.1 Xapian does not report an error on
open ended ranges, but it does not work as expected either.
Relative date and time
[N|number] (years|months|weeks|days|hours|hrs|minutes|mins|sec‐
onds|secs) [...]
All refer to past, can be repeated and will be accumulated.
Units can be abbreviated to any length, with the otherwise ambiguous
single m being m for minutes and M for months.
Number can also be written out one, two, ..., ten, dozen, hundred.
Additionally, the unit may be preceded by "last" or "this" (e.g., "last
week" or "this month").
When combined with absolute date and time, the relative date and time
specification will be relative from the specified absolute date and
time.
Examples: 5M2d, two weeks
Supported absolute time formats
· H[H]:MM[:SS] [(am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)]
· H[H] (am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)
· HHMMSS
· now
· noon
· midnight
· Examples: 17:05, 5pm
Supported absolute date formats
· YYYY-MM[-DD]
· DD-MM[-[YY]YY]
· MM-YYYY
· M[M]/D[D][/[YY]YY]
· M[M]/YYYY
· D[D].M[M][.[YY]YY]
· D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] Mon[thname] [YYYY]
· Mon[thname] D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] [YYYY]
· Wee[kday]
Month names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
Weekday names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
Examples: 2012-07-31, 31-07-2012, 7/31/2012, August 3
Time zones
· (+|-)HH:MM
· (+|-)HH[MM]
Some time zone codes, e.g. UTC, EET.
XAPIAN FIELD PROCESSORS
Certain optional features of the notmuch query processor rely on the
presence of the Xapian field processor API. You can determine if your
notmuch was built against a sufficiently recent version of Xapian by
running
% notmuch config get built_with.field_processor
Currently the following features require field processor support:
· non-range date queries, e.g. "date:today"
· named queries e.g. "query:my_special_query"
· regular expression searches, e.g. "subject:/^\[SPAM\]/"
· thread subqueries, e.g. "thread:{from:bob}"
SEE ALSO
notmuch(1), notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-dump(1), not‐
much-hooks(5), notmuch-insert(1), notmuch-new(1), notmuch-reindex(1),
notmuch-properties(1), *notmuch-reply(1), notmuch-restore(1), not‐
much-search(1), *notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1)
AUTHOR
Carl Worth and many others
COPYRIGHT
2009-2019, Carl Worth and many others
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