1NOTMUCH-SEARCH-TERMS(7) notmuch NOTMUCH-SEARCH-TERMS(7)
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6 notmuch-search-terms - syntax for notmuch queries
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9 notmuch count [option ...] <search-term> ...
10 notmuch dump [--gzip] [--format=(batch-tag|sup)] [--output=<file>] [--]
12 [<search-term> ...]
13 notmuch reindex [option ...] <search-term> ...
15 notmuch search [option ...] <search-term> ...
17 notmuch show [option ...] <search-term> ...
19 notmuch tag +<tag> ... -<tag> [--] <search-term> ...
21
23 Several notmuch commands accept a common syntax for search terms.
24 The search terms can consist of free-form text (and quoted phrases)
26 which will match all messages that contain all of the given
27 terms/phrases in the body, the subject, or any of the sender or recipi‐
28 ent headers.
29 As a special case, a search string consisting of exactly a single
31 asterisk ("*") will match all messages.
32 Search prefixes
34 In addition to free text, the following prefixes can be used to force
35 terms to match against specific portions of an email, (where <brackets>
36 indicate user-supplied values).
37 Some of the prefixes with <regex> forms can be also used to restrict
39 the results to those whose value matches a regular expression (see
40 regex(7)) delimited with //, for example:
41 notmuch search 'from:"/bob@.*[.]example[.]com/"'
43 body:<word-or-quoted-phrase>
45 Match terms in the body of messages.
46 from:<name-or-address> or from:/<regex>/
48 The from: prefix is used to match the name or address of the
49 sender of an email message.
50 to:<name-or-address>
52 The to: prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any
53 recipient of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).
54 subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase> or subject:/<regex>/
56 Any term prefixed with subject: will match only text from the
57 subject of an email. Searching for a phrase in the subject is
58 supported by including quotation marks around the phrase, imme‐
59 diately following subject:.
60 attachment:<word>
62 The attachment: prefix can be used to search for specific file‐
63 names (or extensions) of attachments to email messages.
64 mimetype:<word>
66 The mimetype: prefix will be used to match text from the con‐
67 tent-types of MIME parts within email messages (as specified by
68 the sender).
69 tag:<tag> or tag:/<regex>/ or is:<tag> or is:/<regex>/
71 For tag: and is: valid tag values include inbox and unread by
72 default for new messages added by notmuch new as well as any
73 other tag values added manually with notmuch tag.
74 id:<message-id> or mid:<message-id> or mid:/<regex>/
76 For id: and mid:, message ID values are the literal contents of
77 the Message-ID: header of email messages, but without the '<',
78 '>' delimiters.
79 thread:<thread-id>
81 The thread: prefix can be used with the thread ID values that
82 are generated internally by notmuch (and do not appear in email
83 messages). These thread ID values can be seen in the first col‐
84 umn of output from notmuch search
85 thread:{<notmuch query>}
87 Threads may be searched for indirectly by providing an arbitrary
88 notmuch query in {}. For example, the following returns threads
89 containing a message from mallory and one (not necessarily the
90 same message) with Subject containing the word "crypto".
91 % notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory}" and thread:"{subject:crypto}"'
93 The performance of such queries can vary wildly. To understand
95 this, the user should think of the query thread:{<something>} as
96 expanding to all of the thread IDs which match <something>; not‐
97 much then performs a second search using the expanded query.
98 path:<directory-path> or path:<directory-path>/** or path:/<regex>/
100 The path: prefix searches for email messages that are in partic‐
101 ular directories within the mail store. The directory must be
102 specified relative to the top-level maildir (and without the
103 leading slash). By default, path: matches messages in the speci‐
104 fied directory only. The "/**" suffix can be used to match mes‐
105 sages in the specified directory and all its subdirectories
106 recursively. path:"" matches messages in the root of the mail
107 store and, likewise, path:** matches all messages.
108 path: will find a message if any copy of that message is in the
110 specific directory.
111 folder:<maildir-folder> or folder:/<regex>/
113 The folder: prefix searches for email messages by maildir or MH
114 folder. For MH-style folders, this is equivalent to path:. For
115 maildir, this includes messages in the "new" and "cur" subdirec‐
116 tories. The exact syntax for maildir folders depends on your
117 mail configuration. For maildir++, folder:"" matches the inbox
118 folder (which is the root in maildir++), other folder names
119 always start with ".", and nested folders are separated by "."s,
120 such as folder:.classes.topology. For "file system" maildir, the
121 inbox is typically folder:INBOX and nested folders are separated
122 by slashes, such as folder:classes/topology.
123 folder: will find a message if any copy of that message is in
125 the specific folder.
126 date:<since>..<until> or date:<date>
128 The date: prefix can be used to restrict the results to only
129 messages within a particular time range (based on the Date:
130 header).
131 See DATE AND TIME SEARCH below for details on the range expres‐
133 sion, and supported syntax for <since> and <until> date and time
134 expressions.
135 The time range can also be specified using timestamps without
137 including the date prefix using a syntax of:
138 <initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>
140 Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds
142 since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. Specifying a time range this way
143 is considered legacy and predates the date prefix.
144 lastmod:<initial-revision>..<final-revision>
146 The lastmod: prefix can be used to restrict the result by the
147 database revision number of when messages were last modified
148 (tags were added/removed or filenames changed). This is usually
149 used in conjunction with the --uuid argument to notmuch search
150 to find messages that have changed since an earlier query.
151 query:<name>
153 The query: prefix allows queries to refer to previously saved
154 queries added with notmuch-config(1).
155 property:<key>=<value>
157 The property: prefix searches for messages with a particular
158 <key>=<value> property pair. Properties are used internally by
159 notmuch (and extensions) to add metadata to messages. A given
160 key can be present on a given message with several different
161 values. See notmuch-properties(7) for more details.
162 User defined prefixes are also supported, see notmuch-config(1) for
164 details.
165 Operators
167 In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with
168 Boolean operators (and, or, not, and xor). Each term in the query will
169 be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no explicit operator is
170 provided (except that terms with a common prefix will be implicitly
171 combined with OR). The shorthand '-<term>' can be used for 'not
172 <term>' but unfortunately this does not work at the start of an expres‐
173 sion. Parentheses can also be used to control the combination of the
174 Boolean operators, but will have to be protected from interpretation by
175 the shell, (such as by putting quotation marks around any parenthesized
176 expression).
177 In addition to the standard boolean operators, Xapian provides several
179 operators specific to text searching.
180 notmuch search term1 NEAR term2
182 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2. The
184 threshold can be set like this:
185 notmuch search term1 NEAR/2 term2
187 The search
189 notmuch search term1 ADJ term2
191 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the
193 same order as in the query. The threshold can be set the same as with
194 NEAR:
195 notmuch search term1 ADJ/7 term2
197 Stemming
199 Stemming in notmuch means that these searches
200 notmuch search detailed
202 notmuch search details
203 notmuch search detail
204 will all return identical results, because Xapian first "reduces" the
206 term to the common stem (here 'detail') and then performs the search.
207 There are two ways to turn this off: a search for a capitalized word
209 will be performed unstemmed, so that one can search for "John" and not
210 get results for "Johnson"; phrase searches are also unstemmed (see
211 below for details). Stemming is currently only supported for English.
212 Searches for words in other languages will be performed unstemmed.
213 Wildcards
215 It is possible to use a trailing '*' as a wildcard. A search for
216 'wildc*' will match 'wildcard', 'wildcat', etc.
217 Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes
219 Xapian (and hence notmuch) prefixes are either boolean, supporting
220 exact matches like "tag:inbox" or probabilistic, supporting a more
221 flexible term based searching. Certain special prefixes are processed
222 by notmuch in a way not strictly fitting either of Xapian's built in
223 styles. The prefixes currently supported by notmuch are as follows.
224 Boolean
226 tag:, id:, thread:, folder:, path:, property:
227 Probabilistic
229 body:, to:, attachment:, mimetype:
230 Special
232 from:, query:, subject:
233 Terms and phrases
235 In general Xapian distinguishes between lists of terms and phrases.
236 Phrases are indicated by double quotes (but beware you probably need to
237 protect those from your shell) and insist that those unstemmed words
238 occur in that order. One useful, but initially surprising feature is
239 that the following are equivalent ways to write the same phrase.
240 · "a list of words"
242 · a-list-of-words
244 · a/list/of/words
246 · a.list.of.words
248 Both parenthesised lists of terms and quoted phrases are ok with proba‐
250 bilistic prefixes such as to:, from:, and subject:. In particular
251 subject:(pizza free)
253 is equivalent to
255 subject:pizza and subject:free
257 Both of these will match a subject "Free Delicious Pizza" while
259 subject:"pizza free"
261 will not.
263 Quoting
265 Double quotes are also used by the notmuch query parser to protect
266 boolean terms, regular expressions, or subqueries containing spaces or
267 other special characters, e.g.
268 tag:"a tag"
270 folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"
272 thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}"
274 As with phrases, you need to protect the double quotes from the shell
276 e.g.
277 % notmuch search 'folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"'
279 % notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}" and thread:{to:mallory}'
280
282 notmuch understands a variety of standard and natural ways of express‐
283 ing dates and times, both in absolute terms ("2012-10-24") and in rela‐
284 tive terms ("yesterday"). Any number of relative terms can be combined
285 ("1 hour 25 minutes") and an absolute date/time can be combined with
286 relative terms to further adjust it. A non-exhaustive description of
287 the syntax supported for absolute and relative terms is given below.
288 The range expression
290 date:<since>..<until>
291 The above expression restricts the results to only messages from
293 <since> to <until>, based on the Date: header.
294 <since> and <until> can describe imprecise times, such as "yesterday".
296 In this case, <since> is taken as the earliest time it could describe
297 (the beginning of yesterday) and <until> is taken as the latest time it
298 could describe (the end of yesterday). Similarly, date:january..febru‐
299 ary matches from the beginning of January to the end of February.
300 If specifying a time range using timestamps in conjunction with the
302 date prefix, each timestamp must be preceded by @ (ASCII hex 40). As
303 above, each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds
304 since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. For example:
305 date:@<initial-timestamp>..@<final-timestamp>
306 Currently, spaces in range expressions are not supported. You can
308 replace the spaces with '_', or (in most cases) '-', or (in some cases)
309 leave the spaces out altogether. Examples in this man page use spaces
310 for clarity.
311 Open-ended ranges are supported. I.e. it's possible to specify
313 date:..<until> or date:<since>.. to not limit the start or end time,
314 respectively.
315 Single expression
317 date:<expr> works as a shorthand for date:<expr>..<expr>. For example,
318 date:monday matches from the beginning of Monday until the end of Mon‐
319 day.
320 Relative date and time
322 [N|number] (years|months|weeks|days|hours|hrs|minutes|mins|sec‐
323 onds|secs) [...]
324 All refer to past, can be repeated and will be accumulated.
326 Units can be abbreviated to any length, with the otherwise ambiguous
328 single m being m for minutes and M for months.
329 Number can also be written out one, two, ..., ten, dozen, hundred.
331 Additionally, the unit may be preceded by "last" or "this" (e.g., "last
332 week" or "this month").
333 When combined with absolute date and time, the relative date and time
335 specification will be relative from the specified absolute date and
336 time.
337 Examples: 5M2d, two weeks
339 Supported absolute time formats
341 · H[H]:MM[:SS] [(am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)]
342 · H[H] (am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)
344 · HHMMSS
346 · now
348 · noon
350 · midnight
352 · Examples: 17:05, 5pm
354 Supported absolute date formats
356 · YYYY-MM[-DD]
357 · DD-MM[-[YY]YY]
359 · MM-YYYY
361 · M[M]/D[D][/[YY]YY]
363 · M[M]/YYYY
365 · D[D].M[M][.[YY]YY]
367 · D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] Mon[thname] [YYYY]
369 · Mon[thname] D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] [YYYY]
371 · Wee[kday]
373 Month names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
375 Weekday names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
377 Examples: 2012-07-31, 31-07-2012, 7/31/2012, August 3
379 Time zones
381 · (+|-)HH:MM
382 · (+|-)HH[MM]
384 Some time zone codes, e.g. UTC, EET.
386
388 notmuch(1), notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-dump(1), not‐
389 much-hooks(5), notmuch-insert(1), notmuch-new(1), notmuch-reindex(1),
390 notmuch-properties(1), *notmuch-reply(1), notmuch-restore(1), not‐
391 much-search(1), *notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1)
392
394 Carl Worth and many others
395
397 2009-2020, Carl Worth and many others
3980.31.3 Dec 25, 2020 NOTMUCH-SEARCH-TERMS(7)