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-
+ 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
· from:<name-or-address>
+ · from:/<regex>/
+
· to:<name-or-address>
· subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase>
+ · subject:/<regex>/
+
· attachment:<word>
+ · mimetype:<word>
+
· tag:<tag> (or is:<tag>)
· id:<message-id>
· date:<since>..<until>
+ · lastmod:<initial-revision>..<final-revision>
+
+ · query:<name>
+
+ · property:<key>=<value>
+
The <b>from:</b> prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender of
an email message.
including quotation marks around the phrase, immediately following <b>sub-</b>
<b>ject:</b>.
+ If notmuch is built with <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processors</b> (see below) the <b>from:</b>
+ and <b>subject</b> prefix can be also used to restrict the results to those
+ whose from/subject value matches a regular expression (see <b>regex</b>(7))
+ delimited with //.
+
+ notmuch search 'from:/bob@.*[.]example[.]com/'
+
The <b>attachment:</b> prefix can be used to search for specific filenames (or
extensions) of attachments to email messages.
+ The <b>mimetype:</b> prefix will be used to match text from the content-types
+ of MIME parts within email messages (as specified by the sender).
+
For <b>tag:</b> and <b>is:</b> valid tag values include <b>inbox</b> and <b>unread</b> by default
for new messages added by <b>notmuch</b> <b>new</b> as well as any other tag values
added manually with <b>notmuch</b> <b>tag</b>.
For <b>id:</b>, message ID values are the literal contents of the Message-ID:
header of email messages, but without the '<', '>' delimiters.
- The <b>thread:</b> prefix can be used with the thread ID values that are gen-
+ The <b>thread:</b> 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
<b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b>
The <b>path:</b> prefix searches for email messages that are in particular
- directories within the mail store. The directory must be specified rel-
+ directories within the mail store. The directory must be specified rel‐
ative to the top-level maildir (and without the leading slash). By
default, <b>path:</b> matches messages in the specified directory only. The
"/**" suffix can be used to match messages in the specified directory
- and all its subdirectories recursively. <b>path:</b>"<b>&</b>quot;"<b>&</b>quot; matches messages in
+ and all its subdirectories recursively. <b>path:""</b> matches messages in
the root of the mail store and, likewise, <b>path:**</b> matches all messages.
The <b>folder:</b> prefix searches for email messages by maildir or MH folder.
- For MH-style folders, this is equivalent to <b>path:</b>. For maildir, this
- includes messages in the "new" and "cur" subdirectories. The exact syn-
- tax for maildir folders depends on your mail configuration. For
- maildir++, <b>folder:</b>"<b>&</b>quot;"<b>&</b>quot; matches the inbox folder (which is the root in
- maildir++), other folder names always start with ".", and nested fold-
- ers are separated by "."s, such as <b>folder:.classes.topology</b>. For "file
+ For MH-style folders, this is equivalent to <b>path:</b>. For maildir, this
+ includes messages in the "new" and "cur" subdirectories. The exact syn‐
+ tax for maildir folders depends on your mail configuration. For
+ maildir++, <b>folder:""</b> matches the inbox folder (which is the root in
+ maildir++), other folder names always start with ".", and nested fold‐
+ ers are separated by "."s, such as <b>folder:.classes.topology</b>. For "file
system" maildir, the inbox is typically <b>folder:INBOX</b> and nested folders
are separated by slashes, such as <b>folder:classes/topology</b>.
- Both <b>path:</b> and <b>folder:</b> will find a message if <u>any</u> copy of that message
+ Both <b>path:</b> and <b>folder:</b> will find a message if <u>any</u> copy of that message
is in the specific directory/folder.
- The <b>date:</b> prefix can be used to restrict the results to only messages
+ The <b>date:</b> prefix can be used to restrict the results to only messages
within a particular time range (based on the Date: header) with a range
syntax of:
Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds since
1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
- In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with
- Boolean operators ( <b>and</b>, <b>or</b>, <b>not</b> , 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).
+ The <b>lastmod:</b> 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 conjunc‐
+ tion with the <b>--uuid</b> argument to <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b> to find messages that
+ have changed since an earlier query.
+
+ The <b>query:</b> prefix allows queries to refer to previously saved queries
+ added with <a href='../notmuch-config-1/'>notmuch-config</a>(1). Named queries are only available if not‐
+ much is built with <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processors</b> (see below).
+
+ The <b>property:</b> 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.
+</pre>
- 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
+<h3> Operators</h3>
+<pre>
+ In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with
+ Boolean operators (<b>and</b>, <b>or</b>, <b>not</b>, and <b>xor</b>). 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
+</pre>
+
+<h3> Stemming</h3>
+<pre>
+ <b>Stemming</b> 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.
+</pre>
+
+<h3> Wildcards</h3>
+<pre>
+ It is possible to use a trailing '*' as a wildcard. A search for
+ 'wildc*' will match 'wildcard', 'wildcat', etc.
+</pre>
+
+<h3> Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes</h3>
+<pre>
+ Xapian (and hence notmuch) prefixes are either <b>boolean</b>, supporting
+ exact matches like "<u>tag:inbox</u>" or <b>probabilistic</b>, supporting a more
+ flexible <b>term</b> based searching. Certain <b>special</b> prefixes are processed
+ by notmuch in a way not stricly fitting either of Xapian's built in
+ styles. The prefixes currently supported by notmuch are as follows.
+
+ <b>Boolean</b>
+ <b>tag:</b>, <b>id:</b>, <b>thread:</b>, <b>folder:</b>, <b>path:</b>, <b>property:</b>
+
+ <b>Probabilistic</b>
+ <b>to:</b>, <b>attachment:</b>, <b>mimetype:</b>
+
+ <b>Special</b>
+ <b>from:</b>, <b>query:</b>, <b>subject:</b>
+</pre>
+
+<h3> Terms and phrases</h3>
+<pre>
+ In general Xapian distinguishes between lists of terms and <b>phrases</b>.
+ 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 equivalant 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‐
+ bilisitic prefixes such as <b>to:</b>, <b>from:</b>, and <b>subject:</b>. 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.
</pre>
<h2>DATE AND TIME SEARCH</h2>
<pre>
- 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-
+ 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
<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-
+ could describe (the end of yesterday). Similarly, date:january..febru‐
ary matches from the beginning of January to the end of February.
- Currently, we do not support spaces in range expressions. You can
+ 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 <b>Xapian</b> <b>Field</b> <b>Processor</b> 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
+ 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
+ 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.
-
- Entering date:expr without ".." (for example date:yesterday) won't
- work, as it's not interpreted as a range expression at all. You can
- achieve the expected result by duplicating the expr both sides of ".."
- (for example date:yesterday..yesterday).
</pre>
<h3> Relative date and time</h3>
<pre>
- [N|number]
+ [N|number] (years|months|weeks|days|hours|hrs|minutes|mins|sec‐
onds|secs) [...]
All refer to past, can be repeated and will be accumulated.
Some time zone codes, e.g. UTC, EET.
</pre>
+<h2>XAPIAN FIELD PROCESSORS</h2>
+<pre>
+ 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:/^\[SPAM\]/"
+</pre>
+
<h2>SEE ALSO</h2>
<pre>
- <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>
- <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),
+ <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>
+ <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),
<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)
</pre>
<h2>COPYRIGHT</h2>
<pre>
- 2014, Carl Worth and many others
+ 2009-2017, Carl Worth and many others
</pre>
-<h2>0.18</h2>
+<h2>0.24</h2>
projects / notmuch-wiki / blobdiff