xenial (7) notmuch-search-terms.7.gz
NAME
notmuch-search-terms - syntax for notmuch queries
SYNOPSIS
notmuch count [option ...] <search-term> ...
notmuch dump [--format=(batch-tag|sup)] [--] [--output=<file>] [--] [<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.
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>
• mimetype:<word>
• tag:<tag> (or is:<tag>)
• id:<message-id>
• thread:<thread-id>
• folder:<maildir-folder>
• path:<directory-path> or path:<directory-path>/**
• date:<since>..<until>
• lastmod:<initial-revision>..<final-revision>
The from: prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender of an email message.
The 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 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:.
The attachment: prefix can be used to search for specific filenames (or extensions) of attachments to
email messages.
The mimetype: prefix will be used to match text from the content-types of MIME parts within email
messages (as specified by the sender).
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.
For id:, message ID values are the literal contents of the Message-ID: header of email messages, but
without the '<', '>' delimiters.
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
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.
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.
Both path: and folder: will find a message if any copy of that message is in the specific
directory/folder.
The date: prefix can be used to restrict the results to only messages within a particular time range
(based on the Date: header) with a range syntax of:
date:<since>..<until>
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 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.
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). This is usually used in conjunction
with the --uuid argument to notmuch search to find messages that have changed since an earlier query.
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. The prefixes currently supported by
notmuch are as follows.
┌─────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────┐
│Boolean │ Probabilistic │
├─────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ tag: id: │ from: to: │
│ │ │
│ thread: folder: path: │ subject: attachment: mimetype: │
└─────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────┘
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
equivalant 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 probabilisitic prefixes such as to:,
from:, and subject:. 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.
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.
date:<expr>..! can be used as a shorthand for date:<expr>..<expr>. The expansion takes place before
interpretation, and thus, for example, date:monday..! matches from the beginning of Monday until the end
of Monday. (Note that entering date:<expr> without "..", for example date:yesterday, won't work, as it's
not interpreted as a range expression at all. Again, use date:yesterday..!)
Currently, we do not support spaces in range expressions. 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 (since Xapian 1.2.1), i.e. it's possible to specify date:..<until> or
date:<since>.. to not limit the start or end time, respectively. Pre-1.2.1 Xapian does not report an
error on open ended ranges, but it does not work as expected either.
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.
SEE ALSO
notmuch(1), notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-dump(1), notmuch-hooks(5), notmuch-insert(1), notmuch-new(1), notmuch-reply(1), notmuch-restore(1), notmuch-search(1), notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1)
AUTHOR
Carl Worth and many others
COPYRIGHT
2009-2015, Carl Worth and many others