From b478ec89493a28088e13ae2a242c86e1d9a6fc34 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jani Nikula Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 10:17:29 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] searching: more emphasis on man page, fix date range search info --- searching.mdwn | 32 +++++++++++++++----------------- 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 17 deletions(-) diff --git a/searching.mdwn b/searching.mdwn index 9ff875a..6c2f7c0 100644 --- a/searching.mdwn +++ b/searching.mdwn @@ -3,14 +3,16 @@ 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'|manpages/notmuch-search-terms-7]] also has a few -pointers. +Please see the [[notmuch-search-terms manual +page|manpages/notmuch-search-terms-7]] first for an overview of the +search syntax, including the prefixes (such as "to:") and date range +searches. + +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 @@ -165,14 +167,10 @@ 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 +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 page|manpages/notmuch-search-terms-7]] for details. -- 2.43.0