Provided by: mmh_0.4-2_amd64 
NAME
pick - select messages by content scan - produce a one line per message scan listing
SYNOPSIS
pick [+folder] [msgs] [-and ...] [-or ...] [-not ...] [-lbrace ... -rbrace]
[--component pattern] [-cc pattern] [-date pattern] [-from pattern] [-search pattern]
[-subject pattern] [-to pattern] [-after date] [-before date] [-datefield field]
[-format formatfile] [-width columns] [-thread [+folder]messages|files] [-file
mboxfilename] [-sequence name ...] [-public | -nopublic] [-zero | -nozero] [-list |
-nolist] [-Version] [-help]
scan is equivalent to pick -format scan.default
typical usage:
scan -from jones`
pick -to holloway -sequence select
show `pick -before friday`
DESCRIPTION
Pick searches within a folder for messages with the specified contents, and then
identifies those messages. Two types of search primitives are available: pattern matching
and date constraint operations.
The default regex(7) is used to perform the matching, so the full regular expression
facility is available within pattern. With -search, pattern is used directly, but only
for the body of the Mail. With the others, pick compares the header field name case
insensitive and the tries to match the field body with the pattern.
With --componend you can specify the exact header field name you are looking for. It is
used to pick a component which is not one of `To:', `Cc:', `Date:', `From:', or
`Subject:'. An example is `pick --reply-to pooh'.
Pattern matching is performed on a per-header-field basis. Within the header of the
message, each field is treated as one long line, but in the body, each line is separate.
The pattern will match any case.
Note that since the -date switch is a pattern matching operation (as described above), to
find messages sent on a certain date the pattern string must match the text of the `Date:'
field of the message.
Independent of any pattern matching operations requested, the switches -after date or
-before date may also be used to introduce date/time constraints on all of the messages.
By default, the `Date:' field is consulted, but if another date yielding field (such as
`BB-Posted:' or `Delivery-Date:') should be used, the -datefield field switch may be used.
With -before and -after, pick will actually parse the date fields in each of the messages
specified in `msgs' and compare them to the date/time specified. If -after is given, then
only those messages whose `Date:' field value is chronologically after the date specified
will be considered. The -before switch specifies the complimentary action.
Both the -after and -before switches take legal 822-style date specifications as
arguments. Pick will default certain missing fields so that the entire date need not be
specified. These fields are (in order of defaulting): timezone, time and timezone, date,
date and timezone. All defaults are taken from the current date, time, and timezone.
In addition to 822-style dates, pick will also recognize any of the days of the week
(`sunday', `monday', and so on), and the special dates `today', `yesterday' (24 hours
ago), and `tomorrow' (24 hours from now). All days of the week are judged to refer to a
day in the past (e.g., telling pick `saturday' on a `tuesday' means `last saturday' not
`this saturday'). Further more, dates in a simplified ISO 8601/RFC 3339 style (e.g.
`YYYY-MM-DD' or `YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss') are accepted. Finally, in addition to these
special specifications, pick will also honor a date specification of the form `-ddd',
which means `ddd days ago'. For example,
pick -after -30
identifies the messages of the last thirty days.
Pick supports complex boolean operations on the searching primitives with the -and, -or,
-not, and -lbrace ... -rbrace switches. For example,
pick -after yesterday -and
-lbrace -from freida -or -from fear -rbrace
identifies messages recently sent by `frieda' or `fear'.
The matching primitives take precedence over the -not switch, which in turn takes
precedence over -and which in turn takes precedence over -or. To override the default
precedence, the -lbrace and -rbrace switches are provided, which act just like opening and
closing parentheses in logical expressions.
If no search criteria are given, all the messages specified on the command line are
selected (this defaults to `a').
Once the search has been performed, if the -list switch is given, the message numbers of
the selected messages are written to the standard output separated by newlines. This is
extremely useful for quickly generating arguments for other mmh programs by using the
`backquoting' syntax of the shell. For example, the command
show `pick +todo -after `31 Mar 83 0123 PST'`
says to show those messages in the indicated folder which meet the appropriate criterion.
Note that since pick's context changes are written out prior to show's invocation, you
need not give the folder argument to show as well.
The -sequence name switch may be given once for each sequence the user wishes to define.
For each sequence named, that sequence will be defined to mean exactly those messages
selected by pick. For example,
pick -from frated -seq fred
defines a new message sequence for the current folder called `fred' which contains exactly
those messages that were selected.
By default, pick will zero the sequence before adding it. This action can be disabled
with the -nozero switch, which means that the messages selected by pick will be added to
the sequence, if it already exists, and any messages already a part of that sequence will
remain so.
The -public and -nopublic switches are used by pick in the same way mark uses them.
Scan and pick produces a one-line-per-message listing of the specified and selected folder
or messages. The default format is for pick is to print the message number for each
message. The default Scan line contains the message number (name), the date, the `From:'
field and the `Subject' field. The following example shows the default output of scan
15+ 10/05 crocker nned
16- 10/05 crocker message id format
18 10/06 brien Re: Exit status from mkdir
19 10/07*brien `scan' listing format in mmh
The `+' on message 15 indicates that it is the current message. The `-' on message 16
indicates that it has been replied to, as indicated by a `Replied:' component (produced by
the -annotate switch to the repl command). The `*' on message 19 indicates that no
`Date:' header was present. The time of last modification of the message is given
instead. Scan actually reads each of the specified messages and parses them to extract
the desired fields. During parsing, appropriate error messages will be produced if there
are format errors in any of the messages.
By default, scan will decode RFC-2047 (MIME) encoding in these scan listings. Scan will
only decode these fields if your terminal can natively display the character set used in
the encoding. You should set the MM_CHARSET environment variable to your native character
set, if it is not US-ASCII. See the mh-profile(5) man page for details about this
environment variable.
The -file filename switch allows the user to obtain a scan listing of a maildrop file as
produced by packf. This listing includes every message in the file (you can't scan
individual messages).
The switch -width columns may be used to specify the width of the scan line. The default
is to use the width of the terminal.
The command:
(scan | pr ; show a -showproc pr) | lpr
produces a scan listing of the current folder, followed by a formatted listing of all
messages in the folder, one per page. Omitting `-showproc pr' will cause the messages to
be concatenated, separated by a one-line header and two blank lines.
To override the output format used by scan, the -form file switch is used. This permits
individual fields of the scan listing to be extracted with ease. file is either the name
of a format file or a format string directly, if prepended with an equal sign `='. See
mh-format(5) for the details.
In addition to the standard mh-format(5) escapes, scan also recognizes the following
additional component escapes:
Escape Returns Description
dtimenow date the current date
folder string the name of the current folder
If no date header is present in the message, the function escapes which operate on {date}
will return values for the date of last modification of the message file itself. This
feature is handy for scanning a draft folder, as message drafts usually aren't allowed to
have dates in them.
scan will update the mmh context prior to starting the listing, so interrupting a long
scan listing preserves the new context. nmh purists hate this idea.
FILES
$HOME/.mmh/profile The user profile
PROFILE COMPONENTS
Path: To determine the user's mail storage
Alternate-Mailboxes: To determine the user's mailboxes
Current-Folder: To find the default current folder
SEE ALSO
mark(1)
DEFAULTS
`+folder' defaults to the current folder
`msgs' defaults to all messages
`-datefield date'
`-zero'
`-list' is the default if no `-sequence', `-nolist' otherwise
`-format pick.default' if the program is called with scan `scan.default' is used
CONTEXT
If a folder is given, it will become the current folder.
HISTORY
In previous versions of MH, the pick command would show, scan, or refile the selected
messages. This was rather `inverted logic' from the UNIX point of view, so pick was
changed to define sequences and output those sequences. Hence, pick can be used to
generate the arguments for all other MH commands, instead of giving pick endless switches
for invoking those commands itself.
Also, previous versions of pick balked if you didn't specify a search string or a
date/time constraint. The current version does not, and merely matches the messages you
specify. This lets you type something like:
show `pick l:20 -seq fear`
instead of typing
mark -add -nozero -seq fear l:20
show fear
Also, timezones used to be ignored when comparing dates: they aren't any more.
In MH , nmh and old mmh versions scan and pick where two different tools. So instand of
typing
scan -from philipp
you had typed
scan `pick -from philipp`
With the default config the old style usage is still supported, so you can write scripts
for both mmh and nmh.
HELPFUL HINTS
Use `pick sequence -list' to enumerate the messages in a sequence (such as for use by a
shell script).
BUGS
Any occurrence of -datefield must occur prior to the -after or -before switch it applies
to.
If pick is used in a back-quoted operation, such as
scan `pick -from jones`
and pick selects no messages (e.g., no messages are from `jones'), then the shell will
still run the outer command (e.g., scan). Since no messages were matched, pick produced
no output, and the argument given to the outer command as a result of backquoting pick is
empty. In the case of mmh programs, the outer command now acts as if the default `msg' or
`msgs' should be used (e.g., `all' in the case of scan). To prevent this unexpected
behavior, if -list was given, and if its standard output is not a tty, then pick outputs
the illegal message number `0' when it fails. This lets the outer command fail gracefully
as well.
To account for this case when combining pick with regular shell tools, filter out the
message number `0'. For example, do
pick ... | fgrep -vx 0 | wc -l
to count the number of messages picked.
The pattern syntax `[l-r]' is not supported; each letter to be matched must be included
within the square brackets.