Ubuntu Manpage: notmuch-search-terms - syntax for notmuch queries

Provided by: notmuch_0.38.3-1ubuntu2_amd64

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 recipient
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).

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, immediately
following subject:.

attachment:<word>
The attachment: prefix can be used to search for specific filenames (or extensions) of attachments
to email messages.

mimetype:<word>
The mimetype: prefix will be used to match text from the content-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 column of
output from notmuch-search

thread:{<notmuch query>}
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>; notmuch
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 particular 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 specified directory only. The "/**" suffix can
be used to match messages 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" subdirectories.
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 expression, 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). Negative revisions are
interpreted relative to the most recent database revision (see count --lastmod). 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.

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 for
more details.

sexp:<subquery>
The sexp: prefix allows subqueries in the format documented in notmuch-sexp-queries. Note that
subqueries containing spaces must be quoted, and any embedded double quotes must be escaped (see
Quoting).

User defined prefixes are also supported, see notmuch-config 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
expression. 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:, sexp:

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 probabilistic prefixes such as to:,
from:, and subject:. For prefixes supporting regex search, the parenthesised list should be quoted. 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}'

Double quotes within query strings need to be doubled to escape them.

% notmuch search 'tag:"""quoted tag"""'
% notmuch search 'sexp:"(or ""wizard"" ""php"")"'

DATE AND TIME SEARCH

       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"). 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..february 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>

       Currently,  spaces  in  range  expressions are not supported. 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. I.e. it's possible to specify date:..<until> or  date:<since>..  to  not
       limit the start or end time, respectively.

   Single expression
       date:<expr>  works  as  a  shorthand  for date:<expr>..<expr>.  For example, date:monday matches from the
       beginning of Monday until the end of Monday.

   Relative date and time
       [N|number] (years|months|weeks|days|hours|hrs|minutes|mins|seconds|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.

AUTHOR

       Carl Worth and many others

COPYRIGHT