X-Git-Url: https://git.cworth.org/git?p=notmuch-wiki;a=blobdiff_plain;f=searching.mdwn;h=8f2b07a141c5f4c6f91a4fb158be08e750dbe7b0;hp=1be833d491cad852bbca2597dcb6a9d7dc38572d;hb=HEAD;hpb=cccb44571b0e004c498355efb08602024bb8df81 diff --git a/searching.mdwn b/searching.mdwn index 1be833d..0564f72 100644 --- a/searching.mdwn +++ b/searching.mdwn @@ -1,25 +1,29 @@ -# Searching with notmuch +[[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]] +# Searching with Notmuch What good is an advanced indexing mail client if we don't know how to use it to actually find e-mail? -As notmuch is using Xapian -[this page](http://xapian.org/docs/queryparser.html) is a good start. -However, the description is generic (applies to Xapian in general) and -its intended audience seems to be developers wanting to use Xapian in -their applications. This page attempts to explain it to users of notmuch (who -may not be familiar with Xapian). 'notmuch help search-terms' also has a few -pointers. +The [notmuch-search-terms manual +pages](https://notmuchmail.org/doc/latest/man7/notmuch-search-terms.html) +should cover everything in a fairly concise manner. Please refer to +that for any details. + +Notmuch uses the [Xapian](http://xapian.org/) search engine. The [Xapian +QueryParser](http://xapian.org/docs/queryparser.html) documentation has +a generic description of the search language. The intended audience is +developers wanting to use Xapian in their applications; this page +attempts to explain it to users of Notmuch. ## Stemming See the [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stemming) for the detailed description. What this means for us is that these searches - notmuch search detailed - notmuch search details - notmuch search detail - + 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. @@ -52,11 +56,11 @@ equivalent. The capitalized form is used below only for readability* ### '+' and '-' - notmuch search +term1 + notmuch search +term1 will only return results that contain 'term1'. - notmuch search -term2 + notmuch search -term2 will return results that do not contain 'term2'. '+' and '-' can also be used on bracketed expressions or phrases (see below). @@ -70,28 +74,28 @@ will return results that contain **both** 'term1' and 'term2'. If no explicit operator is provided all search terms are connected by an implicit AND, so these two searches: - notmuch search term1 AND term2 - notmuch search term1 term2 + notmuch search term1 AND term2 + notmuch search term1 term2 are equivalent. - notmuch search term1 NOT term2 + notmuch search term1 NOT term2 will return results that contain 'term1' but do not contain 'term2'. For a query that looks more like natural language you can also use AND NOT - notmuch search term1 AND NOT term2 + notmuch search term1 AND NOT term2 ### XOR (exclusive OR) - notmuch search term1 XOR term2 + notmuch search term1 XOR term2 will return results that contain either 'term1' or 'term2', but **not** both. ### OR - notmuch search term1 OR term2 + notmuch search term1 OR term2 will return results that contain either 'term1' or 'term2'. @@ -100,33 +104,33 @@ will return results that contain either 'term1' or 'term2'. Operators above are listed in the default order of precedence. One can override the precedence using bracketed expressions: - notmuch search term1 AND term2 OR term3 + notmuch search term1 AND term2 OR term3 is the same as - notmuch search (term1 AND term2) OR term3 + notmuch search (term1 AND term2) OR term3 but not the same as - notmuch search term1 AND (term2 OR term3) + notmuch search term1 AND (term2 OR term3) ### NEAR - notmuch search term1 NEAR term2 + 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 + notmuch search term1 NEAR/2 term2 ### ADJ (adjacent) -notmuch search term1 ADJ term2 + 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 + notmuch search term1 ADJ/7 term2 ### Phrases @@ -137,33 +141,38 @@ e-mail addresses are also treated as phrases. In practice this means that these two searches are **not** equivalent: - notmuch search "Debian Project" - notmuch search Debian ADJ/1 Project + notmuch search "Debian Project" + notmuch search Debian ADJ/1 Project ## Prefix searches You can search your collection by using several prefixes, like this: - notmuch search from:john + notmuch search from:john This will return results where 'john' appears in the name or the e-mail address. See 'notmuch help search-terms' for a complete list of prefixes. +### Message IDs + +An important concept for notmuch is the Message-Id, which is a unique +identifier for each message. Individual messages can be accessed via +their message ID with the "id:" prefix: + + notmuch search id: + ## Range searches Since notmuch is about (large) e-mail collections it is very useful to be able to search for e-mails within a specific date range. This will work: - notmuch search .. - -However, until a better syntax is implemented the only form accepted for -timestamps is Unix time (seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC), so the -utility 'date' can help: - - notmuch search $(date +%s -d 2009-10-01)..$(date +%s) + notmuch search date:.. -Explanation: '+%s' will tell date to output Unix time format and -d will -tell date to output the date from 2009-10-01. See date(1) for more -details. +For `` and ``, notmuch understands a variety of standard +and natural ways of expressing dates and times, both in absolute terms +("2012-10-24") and in relative terms ("yesterday"). Please refer to +the [notmuch-search-terms +manual](https://notmuchmail.org/doc/latest/man7/notmuch-search-terms.html) +for details.