NOTMUCH-SHOW(1)
NAME
notmuch-show - show messages matching the given search terms
SYNOPSIS
notmuch show [options...] <search-term>...
DESCRIPTION
Shows all messages matching the search terms.
See notmuch-search-terms(7) for details of the supported syntax for
<search-terms>.
The messages will be grouped and sorted based on the threading (all
replies to a particular message will appear immediately after that mes-
sage in date order). The output is not indented by default, but depth
tags are printed so that proper indentation can be performed by a post-
processor (such as the emacs interface to notmuch).
Supported options for show include
--entire-thread=(true|false)
If true, notmuch show outputs all messages in the thread of any
message matching the search terms; if false, it outputs only
the matching messages. For --format=json and --format=sexp this
defaults to true. For other formats, this defaults to false.
--format=(text|json|sexp|mbox|raw)
text (default for messages)
The default plain-text format has all text-content MIME
parts decoded. Various components in the output, (message,
header, body, attachment, and MIME part), will be delimited
by easily-parsed markers. Each marker consists of a Con-
trol-L character (ASCII decimal 12), the name of the
marker, and then either an opening or closing brace, ('{'
or '}'), to either open or close the component. For a mul-
tipart MIME message, these parts will be nested.
json
The output is formatted with Javascript Object Notation
(JSON). This format is more robust than the text format for
automated processing. The nested structure of multipart
MIME messages is reflected in nested JSON output. By
default JSON output includes all messages in a matching
thread; that is, by default,
--format=json sets --entire-thread The caller can disable
this behaviour by setting --entire-thread=false
sexp
The output is formatted as an S-Expression (sexp). This
format is more robust than the text format for automated
processing. The nested structure of multipart MIME messages
is reflected in nested S-Expression output. By default, S-
Expression output includes all messages in a matching
thread; that is, by default,
--format=sexp sets --entire-thread The caller can disable
this behaviour by setting --entire-thread=false
mbox
All matching messages are output in the traditional, Unix
mbox format with each message being prefixed by a line
beginning with "From " and a blank line separating each
message. Lines in the message content beginning with "From
" (preceded by zero or more '>' characters) have an addi-
tional '>' character added. This reversible escaping is
termed "mboxrd" format and described in detail here:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/mail-mbox-formats.html
raw (default for a single part, see --part)
For a message or an attached message part, the original,
raw content of the email message is output. Consumers of
this format should expect to implement MIME decoding and
similar functions.
For a single part (--part) the raw part content is output
after performing any necessary MIME decoding. Note that
messages with a simple body still have two parts: part 0 is
the whole message and part 1 is the body.
For a multipart part, the part headers and body (including
all child parts) is output.
The raw format must only be used with search terms matching
single message.
--format-version=N
Use the specified structured output format version. This is
intended for programs that invoke notmuch(1) internally. If
omitted, the latest supported version will be used.
--part=N
Output the single decoded MIME part N of a single message. The
search terms must match only a single message. Message parts
are numbered in a depth-first walk of the message MIME struc-
ture, and are identified in the 'json', 'sexp' or 'text' output
formats.
--verify
Compute and report the validity of any MIME cryptographic sig-
natures found in the selected content (ie. "multipart/signed"
parts). Status of the signature will be reported (currently on-
ly supported with --format=json and --format=sexp), and the
multipart/signed part will be replaced by the signed data.
--decrypt
Decrypt any MIME encrypted parts found in the selected content
(ie. "multipart/encrypted" parts). Status of the decryption
will be reported (currently only supported with --format=json
and --format=sexp) and the multipart/encrypted part will be re-
placed by the decrypted content. Implies --verify.
--exclude=(true|false)
Specify whether to omit threads only matching search.tag_ex-
clude from the search results (the default) or not. In either
case the excluded message will be marked with the exclude flag
(except when output=mbox when there is nowhere to put the
flag).
If --entire-thread is specified then complete threads are re-
turned regardless (with the excluded flag being set when appro-
priate) but threads that only match in an excluded message are
not returned when --exclude=true.
The default is --exclude=true.
--body=(true|false)
If true (the default) notmuch show includes the bodies of the
messages in the output; if false, bodies are omitted.
--body=false is only implemented for the json and sexp formats
and it is incompatible with --part >> 0.
This is useful if the caller only needs the headers as body-
less output is much faster and substantially smaller.
A common use of notmuch show is to display a single thread of email
messages. For this, use a search term of "thread:<thread-id>" as can be
seen in the first column of output from the notmuch search command.
EXIT STATUS
This command supports the following special exit status codes
20 The requested format version is too old.
21 The requested format version is too new.
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-search-terms(7), notmuch-tag(1)
Notmuch 0.15