notmuch/man/man7/notmuch-search-terms.7

.TH NOTMUCH-SEARCH-TERMS 7 2011-12-04 "Notmuch 0.10.2"

.SH NAME
notmuch-search-terms \- Syntax for notmuch queries

.SH SYNOPSIS

.B notmuch count
.RI  [ options... ]
.RI  < search-term ">..."

.B "notmuch dump"
.RI "[ <" filename "> ] [--]"
.RI "[ <" search-term ">...]"

.B notmuch part
.BI "\-\-part=" "<part-number>"
.RI < search-term ">..."

.B notmuch search
.RI  [  options "...] <" search-term ">..."

.B notmuch show
.RI "[" options "...] <" search-term ">..."

.B notmuch tag
.RI  "+<" tag> "|\-<" tag "> [...] [\-\-] <" search-term ">..."


.SH 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.

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):

	from:<name-or-address>

	to:<name-or-address>

	subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase>

	attachment:<word>

	tag:<tag> (or is:<tag>)

	id:<message-id>

	thread:<thread-id>

	folder:<directory-path>

The
.B from:
prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender of an email
message.

The
.B to:
prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any recipient of an
email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).

Any term prefixed with
.B 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
.BR subject: .

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

For
.BR tag: " and " is:
valid tag values include
.BR inbox " and " unread
by default for new messages added by
.B notmuch new
as well as any other tag values added manually with
.BR "notmuch tag" .

For
.BR id: ,
message ID values are the literal contents of the Message\-ID: header
of email messages, but without the '<', '>' delimiters.

The
.B 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
.B "notmuch search"

The
.B folder:
prefix can be used to search for email message files that are
contained within particular directories within the mail store. Only
the directory components below the top-level mail database path are
available to be searched.

In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be
combined with Boolean operators (
.BR and ", " or ", " not
, 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).

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).

Finally, results can be restricted to only messages within a
particular time range, (based on the Date: header) with 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. This is not the most convenient means of
expressing date ranges, but until notmuch is fixed to accept a more
convenient form, one can use the date program to construct
timestamps. For example, with the bash shell the following syntax would
specify a date range to return messages from 2009\-10\-01 until the
current time:

	$(date +%s \-d 2009\-10\-01)..$(date +%s)