1PICK(1) [nmh-1.3] PICK(1)
2
6 pick - search for messages by content
7
9 pick [+folder] [msgs] [-and ...] [-or ...] [-not ...] [-lbrace ...
10 -rbrace] [--component pattern] [-cc pattern] [-date pattern]
11 [-from pattern] [-search pattern] [-subject pattern] [-to pattern]
12 [-after date] [-before date] [-datefield field] [-sequence name
13 ...] [-public | -nopublic] [-zero | -nozero] [-list | -nolist]
14 [-version] [-help]
15 typical usage:
17 scan `pick -from jones`
19 pick -to holloway -sequence select
20 show `pick -before friday`
21
23 Pick searches within a folder for messages with the specified contents,
24 and then identifies those messages. Two types of search primitives are
25 available: pattern matching and date constraint operations.
26 A modified grep(1) is used to perform the matching, so the full regular
28 expression (see ed(1)) facility is available within pattern. With
29 -search, pattern is used directly, and with the others, the grep pat‐
30 tern constructed is:
31 `component[ \t]*:.*pattern'
33 This means that the pattern specified for a -search will be found
35 everywhere in the message, including the header and the body, while the
36 other pattern matching requests are limited to the single specified
37 component. The expression
38 `--component pattern'
40 is a shorthand for specifying
42 `-search “component[ \t]*:.*pattern” '
44 It is used to pick a component which is not one of “To:”, “cc:”,
46 “Date:”, “From:”, or “Subject:”. An example is “pick --reply-to pooh”.
47 Pattern matching is performed on a per-line basis. Within the header
49 of the message, each component is treated as one long line, but in the
50 body, each line is separate. Lower-case letters in the search pattern
51 will match either lower or upper case in the message, while upper case
52 will match only upper case.
53 Note that since the -date switch is a pattern matching operation (as
55 described above), to find messages sent on a certain date the pattern
56 string must match the text of the “Date:” field of the message.
57 Independent of any pattern matching operations requested, the switches
59 -after date or -before date may also be used to introduce date/time
60 constraints on all of the messages. By default, the “Date:” field is
61 consulted, but if another date yielding field (such as “BB-Posted:” or
62 “Delivery-Date:”) should be used, the -datefield field switch may be
63 used.
64 With -before and -after, pick will actually parse the date fields in
66 each of the messages specified in `msgs' and compare them to the
67 date/time specified. If -after is given, then only those messages
68 whose “Date:” field value is chronologically after the date specified
69 will be considered. The -before switch specifies the complimentary
70 action.
71 Both the -after and -before switches take legal 822-style date specifi‐
73 cations as arguments. Pick will default certain missing fields so that
74 the entire date need not be specified. These fields are (in order of
75 defaulting): timezone, time and timezone, date, date and timezone. All
76 defaults are taken from the current date, time, and timezone.
77 In addition to 822-style dates, pick will also recognize any of the
79 days of the week (“sunday”, “monday”, and so on), and the special dates
80 “today”, “yesterday” (24 hours ago), and “tomorrow” (24 hours from
81 now). All days of the week are judged to refer to a day in the past
82 (e.g., telling pick “saturday” on a “tuesday” means “last saturday” not
83 “this saturday”).
84 Finally, in addition to these special specifications, pick will also
86 honor a specification of the form “-dd”, which means “dd days ago”.
87 Pick supports complex boolean operations on the searching primitives
89 with the -and, -or, -not, and -lbrace ... -rbrace switches. For exam‐
90 ple,
91 pick -after yesterday -and
93 -lbrace -from freida -or -from fear -rbrace
94 identifies messages recently sent by “frieda” or “fear”.
96 The matching primitives take precedence over the -not switch, which in
98 turn takes precedence over -and which in turn takes precedence over
99 -or. To override the default precedence, the -lbrace and -rbrace
100 switches are provided, which act just like opening and closing paren‐
101 theses in logical expressions.
102 If no search criteria are given, all the messages specified on the com‐
104 mand line are selected (this defaults to “all”).
105 Once the search has been performed, if the -list switch is given, the
107 message numbers of the selected messages are written to the standard
108 output separated by newlines. This is extremely useful for quickly
109 generating arguments for other nmh programs by using the “backquoting”
110 syntax of the shell. For example, the command
111 scan `pick +todo -after “31 Mar 83 0123 PST”`
113 says to scan those messages in the indicated folder which meet the
115 appropriate criterion. Note that since pick's context changes are
116 written out prior to scan's invocation, you need not give the folder
117 argument to scan as well.
118 The -sequence name switch may be given once for each sequence the user
120 wishes to define. For each sequence named, that sequence will be
121 defined to mean exactly those messages selected by pick. For example,
122 pick -from frated -seq fred
124 defines a new message sequence for the current folder called “fred”
126 which contains exactly those messages that were selected.
127 By default, pick will zero the sequence before adding it. This action
129 can be disabled with the -nozero switch, which means that the messages
130 selected by pick will be added to the sequence, if it already exists,
131 and any messages already a part of that sequence will remain so.
132 The -public and -nopublic switches are used by pick in the same way
134 mark uses them.
135
138 $HOME/.mh_profile The user profile
139
142 Path: To determine the user's nmh directory
143 Current-Folder: To find the default current folder
144
147 mark(1)
148
151 `+folder' defaults to the current folder
152 `msgs' defaults to all
153 `-datefield date'
154 `-zero'
155 `-list' is the default if no `-sequence', `-nolist' otherwise
156
159 If a folder is given, it will become the current folder.
160
163 In previous versions of MH, the pick command would show, scan, or
164 refile the selected messages. This was rather “inverted logic” from
165 the UNIX point of view, so pick was changed to define sequences and
166 output those sequences. Hence, pick can be used to generate the argu‐
167 ments for all other MH commands, instead of giving pick endless
168 switches for invoking those commands itself.
169 Also, previous versions of pick balked if you didn't specify a search
171 string or a date/time constraint. The current version does not, and
172 merely matches the messages you specify. This lets you type something
173 like:
174 show `pick last:20 -seq fear`
176 instead of typing
178 mark -add -nozero -seq fear last:20
180 show fear
181 Finally, timezones used to be ignored when comparing dates: they aren't
183 any more.
184
187 Use “pick sequence -list” to enumerate the messages in a sequence (such
188 as for use by a shell script).
189
192 The argument to the -after and -before switches must be interpreted as
193 a single token by the shell that invokes pick. Therefore, one must
194 usually place the argument to this switch inside double-quotes. Fur‐
195 thermore, any occurrence of -datefield must occur prior to the -after
196 or -before switch it applies to.
197 If pick is used in a back-quoted operation, such as
199 scan `pick -from jones`
201 and pick selects no messages (e.g., no messages are from “jones”), then
203 the shell will still run the outer command (e.g., scan). Since no mes‐
204 sages were matched, pick produced no output, and the argument given to
205 the outer command as a result of backquoting pick is empty. In the
206 case of nmh programs, the outer command now acts as if the default
207 `msg' or `msgs' should be used (e.g., “all” in the case of scan). To
208 prevent this unexpected behavior, if -list was given, and if its stan‐
209 dard output is not a tty, then pick outputs the illegal message number
210 “0” when it fails. This lets the outer command fail gracefully as
211 well.
212 The pattern syntax “[l-r]” is not supported; each letter to be matched
214 must be included within the square brackets.
215MH.6.8 1 June 2008 PICK(1)