NAME

       notmuch-tag - add/remove tags for all messages matching the search terms

SYNOPSIS

       notmuch tag [options ...] +<tag>|-<tag> [--] <search-term> ...

       notmuch tag --batch [--input=<filename>]

DESCRIPTION

       Add/remove tags for all messages matching the search terms.

       See notmuch-search-terms for details of the supported syntax for <search-term>.

       Tags prefixed by '+' are added while those prefixed by '-' are removed.  For each message,
       tag changes are applied in the order they appear on the command line.

       The beginning of the search terms is recognized by the first  argument  that  begins  with
       neither  '+'  nor  '-'.  Support  for  an initial search term beginning with '+' or '-' is
       provided by allowing the user to specify a "--" argument to separate  the  tags  from  the
       search terms.

       notmuch   tag   updates   the   maildir   flags   according   to   tag   changes   if  the
       maildir.synchronize_flags configuration option is enabled. See notmuch-config for details.

       Supported options for tag include

       --remove-all
              Remove all tags from each message matching the search terms before applying the tag
              changes appearing on the command line.  This means setting the tags of each message
              to the tags to be added. If there are no tags to be added, the messages  will  have
              no tags.

       --batch
              Read  batch  tagging  operations  from  a  file  (stdin  by default).  This is more
              efficient than repeated notmuch tag invocations. See TAG FILE FORMAT below for  the
              input  format. This option is not compatible with specifying tagging on the command
              line.

       --input=<filename>
              Read input from given file, instead of from stdin. Implies --batch.

TAG FILE FORMAT

       The input must consist of lines of the format:

       +<tag>|-<tag> [...] [--] <query>

       Each line is interpreted similarly to notmuch tag command line arguments. The delimiter is
       one  or  more  spaces ' '. Any characters in <tag> may be hex-encoded with %NN where NN is
       the hexadecimal value of the character. To hex-encode a character with a multi-byte  UTF-8
       encoding,  hex-encode  each  byte.  Any  spaces  in  <tag> must be hex-encoded as %20. Any
       characters that are not part of <tag> must not be hex-encoded.

       In the future tag:"tag with spaces" style quoting may be supported for <tag> as well;  for
       this reason all double quote characters in <tag> should be hex-encoded.

       The  <query>  should be quoted using Xapian boolean term quoting rules: if a term contains
       whitespace or a close paren or starts with a double quote, it must be enclosed  in  double
       quotes  (not  including any prefix) and double quotes inside the term must be doubled (see
       below for examples).

       Leading and trailing space ' ' is ignored. Empty lines and lines beginning  with  '#'  are
       ignored.

   EXAMPLE
       The  following  shows a valid input to batch tagging. Note that only the isolated '*' acts
       as a wildcard. Also note the two different quotings of the tag space in tags

          +winner *
          +foo::bar%25 -- (One and Two) or (One and tag:winner)
          +found::it -- tag:foo::bar%
          # ignore this line and the next

          +space%20in%20tags -- Two
          # add tag '(tags)', among other stunts.
          +crazy{ +(tags) +&are +#possible\ -- tag:"space in tags"
          +match*crazy -- tag:crazy{
          +some_tag -- id:"this is ""nauty)"""

SEE ALSO

       notmuch,  notmuch-config,  notmuch-count,  notmuch-dump,  notmuch-hooks,   notmuch-insert,
       notmuch-new,   notmuch-reply,   notmuch-restore,   notmuch-search,   notmuch-search-terms,
       notmuch-show,

AUTHOR

       Carl Worth and many others

COPYRIGHT

       2009-2023, Carl Worth and many others