1NOTMUCH-SHOW(1) notmuch NOTMUCH-SHOW(1)
2
6 notmuch-show - show messages matching the given search terms
7
9 notmuch show [option ...] <search-term> ...
10
12 Shows all messages matching the search terms.
13 See notmuch-search-terms for details of the supported syntax for
15 <search-terms>.
16 The messages will be grouped and sorted based on the threading (all
18 replies to a particular message will appear immediately after that mes‐
19 sage in date order). The output is not indented by default, but depth
20 tags are printed so that proper indentation can be performed by a
21 post-processor (such as the emacs interface to notmuch).
22 Supported options for show include
24 --duplicate=N
26 Output duplicate number N. The numbering starts from 1, and
27 matches the order used by search --duplicate and search --out‐
28 put=files
29 --entire-thread=(true|false)
31 If true, notmuch show outputs all messages in the thread of any
32 message matching the search terms; if false, it outputs only the
33 matching messages. For --format=json and --format=sexp this de‐
34 faults to true. For other formats, this defaults to false.
35 --format=(text|json|sexp|mbox|raw)
37 text (default for messages)
39 The default plain-text format has all text-content MIME
40 parts decoded. Various components in the output, (mes‐
41 sage, header, body, attachment, and MIME part), will be
42 delimited by easily-parsed markers. Each marker consists
43 of a Control-L character (ASCII decimal 12), the name of
44 the marker, and then either an opening or closing brace,
45 ('{' or '}'), to either open or close the component. For
46 a multipart MIME message, these parts will be nested.
47 json The output is formatted with Javascript Object Notation
49 (JSON). This format is more robust than the text format
50 for automated processing. The nested structure of multi‐
51 part MIME messages is reflected in nested JSON output. By
52 default JSON output includes all messages in a matching
53 thread; that is, by default, --format=json sets --en‐
54 tire-thread. The caller can disable this behaviour by
55 setting --entire-thread=false. The JSON output is always
56 encoded as UTF-8 and any message content included in the
57 output will be charset-converted to UTF-8.
58 sexp The output is formatted as the Lisp s-expression (sexp)
60 equivalent of the JSON format above. Objects are format‐
61 ted as property lists whose keys are keywords (symbols
62 preceded by a colon). True is formatted as t and both
63 false and null are formatted as nil. As for JSON, the
64 s-expression output is always encoded as UTF-8.
65 mbox All matching messages are output in the traditional, Unix
67 mbox format with each message being prefixed by a line
68 beginning with "From " and a blank line separating each
69 message. Lines in the message content beginning with
70 "From " (preceded by zero or more '>' characters) have an
71 additional '>' character added. This reversible escaping
72 is termed "mboxrd" format and described in detail here:
73 http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/mail-mbox-formats.html
74 raw (default if --part is given)
76 Write the raw bytes of the given MIME part of a message
77 to standard out. For this format, it is an error to spec‐
78 ify a query that matches more than one message.
79 If the specified part is a leaf part, this outputs the
81 body of the part after performing content transfer decod‐
82 ing (but no charset conversion). This is suitable for
83 saving attachments, for example.
84 For a multipart or message part, the output includes the
86 part headers as well as the body (including all child
87 parts). No decoding is performed because multipart and
88 message parts cannot have non-trivial content transfer
89 encoding. Consumers of this may need to implement MIME
90 decoding and similar functions.
91 --format-version=N
93 Use the specified structured output format version. This is in‐
94 tended for programs that invoke notmuch internally. If omitted,
95 the latest supported version will be used.
96 --part=N
98 Output the single decoded MIME part N of a single message. The
99 search terms must match only a single message. Message parts are
100 numbered in a depth-first walk of the message MIME structure,
101 and are identified in the 'json', 'sexp' or 'text' output for‐
102 mats.
103 Note that even a message with no MIME structure or a single body
105 part still has two MIME parts: part 0 is the whole message
106 (headers and body) and part 1 is just the body.
107 --sort=(newest-first|oldest-first)
109 This option can be used to present results in either chronologi‐
110 cal order (oldest-first) or reverse chronological order (new‐
111 est-first).
112 Only threads as a whole are reordered. Ordering of messages
114 within each thread will not be affected by this flag, since that
115 order is always determined by the thread's replies.
116 By default, results will be displayed in reverse chronological
118 order, (that is, the newest results will be displayed first).
119 --offset=[-]N
121 Skip displaying the first N results. With the leading '-', start
122 at the Nth result from the end.
123 --limit=N
125 Limit the number of displayed results to N.
126 --verify
128 Compute and report the validity of any MIME cryptographic signa‐
129 tures found in the selected content (e.g., "multipart/signed"
130 parts). Status of the signature will be reported (currently only
131 supported with --format=json and --format=sexp), and the multi‐
132 part/signed part will be replaced by the signed data.
133 --decrypt=(false|auto|true|stash)
135 If true, decrypt any MIME encrypted parts found in the selected
136 content (e.g., "multipart/encrypted" parts). Status of the de‐
137 cryption will be reported (currently only supported with --for‐
138 mat=json and --format=sexp) and on successful decryption the
139 multipart/encrypted part will be replaced by the decrypted con‐
140 tent.
141 stash behaves like true, but upon successful decryption it will
143 also stash the message's session key in the database, and index
144 the cleartext of the message, enabling automatic decryption in
145 the future.
146 If auto, and a session key is already known for the message,
148 then it will be decrypted, but notmuch will not try to access
149 the user's keys.
150 Use false to avoid even automatic decryption.
152 Non-automatic decryption (stash or true, in the absence of a
154 stashed session key) expects a functioning gpg-agent(1) to pro‐
155 vide any needed credentials. Without one, the decryption will
156 fail.
157 Note: setting either true or stash here implies --verify.
159 Here is a table that summarizes each of these policies:
161 ┌──────────────┬───────┬──────┬──────┬───────┐
163 │ │ false │ auto │ true │ stash │
164 ├──────────────┼───────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
165 │Show cleart‐ │ │ X │ X │ X │
166 │ext if ses‐ │ │ │ │ │
167 │sion key is │ │ │ │ │
168 │already known │ │ │ │ │
169 ├──────────────┼───────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
170 │Use secret │ │ │ X │ X │
171 │keys to show │ │ │ │ │
172 │cleartext │ │ │ │ │
173 ├──────────────┼───────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
174 │Stash any │ │ │ │ X │
175 │newly recov‐ │ │ │ │ │
176 │ered session │ │ │ │ │
177 │keys, rein‐ │ │ │ │ │
178 │dexing mes‐ │ │ │ │ │
179 │sage if found │ │ │ │ │
180 └──────────────┴───────┴──────┴──────┴───────┘
181 Note: --decrypt=stash requires write access to the database.
183 Otherwise, notmuch show operates entirely in read-only mode.
184 Default: auto
186 --exclude=(true|false)
188 Specify whether to omit threads only matching search.ex‐
189 clude_tags from the search results (the default) or not. In ei‐
190 ther case the excluded message will be marked with the exclude
191 flag (except when output=mbox when there is nowhere to put the
192 flag).
193 If --entire-thread is specified then complete threads are re‐
195 turned regardless (with the excluded flag being set when appro‐
196 priate) but threads that only match in an excluded message are
197 not returned when --exclude=true.
198 The default is --exclude=true.
200 --body=(true|false)
202 If true (the default) notmuch show includes the bodies of the
203 messages in the output; if false, bodies are omitted.
204 --body=false is only implemented for the text, json and sexp
205 formats and it is incompatible with --part > 0.
206 This is useful if the caller only needs the headers as body-less
208 output is much faster and substantially smaller.
209 --include-html
211 Include "text/html" parts as part of the output (currently only
212 supported with --format=text, --format=json and --format=sexp).
213 By default, unless --part=N is used to select a specific part or
214 --include-html is used to include all "text/html" parts, no part
215 with content type "text/html" is included in the output.
216 A common use of notmuch show is to display a single thread of email
218 messages. For this, use a search term of "thread:<thread-id>" as can be
219 seen in the first column of output from the notmuch-search command.
220
222 Structured output (json / sexp) is influenced by the configuration op‐
223 tion show.extra_headers. See notmuch-config for details.
224
226 This command supports the following special exit status codes
227 20 The requested format version is too old.
229 21 The requested format version is too new.
231
233 notmuch, notmuch-config, notmuch-count, notmuch-dump, notmuch-hooks,
234 notmuch-insert, notmuch-new, notmuch-reply, notmuch-restore,
235 notmuch-search, notmuch-search-terms, notmuch-tag
236
238 Carl Worth and many others
239
241 2009-2023, Carl Worth and many others
2420.38 Sep 12, 2023 NOTMUCH-SHOW(1)