1NOTMUCH-SHOW(1) notmuch NOTMUCH-SHOW(1)
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6 notmuch-show - show messages matching the given search terms
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9 notmuch show [option ...] <search-term> ...
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12 Shows all messages matching the search terms.
13 See notmuch-search-terms(7) 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 --entire-thread=(true|false)
26 If true, notmuch show outputs all messages in the thread of any
27 message matching the search terms; if false, it outputs only the
28 matching messages. For --format=json and --format=sexp this de‐
29 faults to true. For other formats, this defaults to false.
30 --format=(text|json|sexp|mbox|raw)
32 text (default for messages)
34 The default plain-text format has all text-content MIME
35 parts decoded. Various components in the output, (mes‐
36 sage, header, body, attachment, and MIME part), will be
37 delimited by easily-parsed markers. Each marker consists
38 of a Control-L character (ASCII decimal 12), the name of
39 the marker, and then either an opening or closing brace,
40 ('{' or '}'), to either open or close the component. For
41 a multipart MIME message, these parts will be nested.
42 json The output is formatted with Javascript Object Notation
44 (JSON). This format is more robust than the text format
45 for automated processing. The nested structure of multi‐
46 part MIME messages is reflected in nested JSON output. By
47 default JSON output includes all messages in a matching
48 thread; that is, by default, --format=json sets --en‐
49 tire-thread. The caller can disable this behaviour by
50 setting --entire-thread=false. The JSON output is always
51 encoded as UTF-8 and any message content included in the
52 output will be charset-converted to UTF-8.
53 sexp The output is formatted as the Lisp s-expression (sexp)
55 equivalent of the JSON format above. Objects are format‐
56 ted as property lists whose keys are keywords (symbols
57 preceded by a colon). True is formatted as t and both
58 false and null are formatted as nil. As for JSON, the
59 s-expression output is always encoded as UTF-8.
60 mbox All matching messages are output in the traditional, Unix
62 mbox format with each message being prefixed by a line
63 beginning with "From " and a blank line separating each
64 message. Lines in the message content beginning with
65 "From " (preceded by zero or more '>' characters) have an
66 additional '>' character added. This reversible escaping
67 is termed "mboxrd" format and described in detail here:
68 http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/mail-mbox-formats.html
69 raw (default if --part is given)
71 Write the raw bytes of the given MIME part of a message
72 to standard out. For this format, it is an error to spec‐
73 ify a query that matches more than one message.
74 If the specified part is a leaf part, this outputs the
76 body of the part after performing content transfer decod‐
77 ing (but no charset conversion). This is suitable for
78 saving attachments, for example.
79 For a multipart or message part, the output includes the
81 part headers as well as the body (including all child
82 parts). No decoding is performed because multipart and
83 message parts cannot have non-trivial content transfer
84 encoding. Consumers of this may need to implement MIME
85 decoding and similar functions.
86 --format-version=N
88 Use the specified structured output format version. This is in‐
89 tended for programs that invoke notmuch(1) internally. If omit‐
90 ted, the latest supported version will be used.
91 --part=N
93 Output the single decoded MIME part N of a single message. The
94 search terms must match only a single message. Message parts are
95 numbered in a depth-first walk of the message MIME structure,
96 and are identified in the 'json', 'sexp' or 'text' output for‐
97 mats.
98 Note that even a message with no MIME structure or a single body
100 part still has two MIME parts: part 0 is the whole message
101 (headers and body) and part 1 is just the body.
102 --sort=(newest-first|oldest-first)
104 This option can be used to present results in either chronologi‐
105 cal order (oldest-first) or reverse chronological order (new‐
106 est-first).
107 Only threads as a whole are reordered. Ordering of messages
109 within each thread will not be affected by this flag, since that
110 order is always determined by the thread's replies.
111 By default, results will be displayed in reverse chronological
113 order, (that is, the newest results will be displayed first).
114 --verify
116 Compute and report the validity of any MIME cryptographic signa‐
117 tures found in the selected content (e.g., "multipart/signed"
118 parts). Status of the signature will be reported (currently only
119 supported with --format=json and --format=sexp), and the multi‐
120 part/signed part will be replaced by the signed data.
121 --decrypt=(false|auto|true|stash)
123 If true, decrypt any MIME encrypted parts found in the selected
124 content (e.g., "multipart/encrypted" parts). Status of the de‐
125 cryption will be reported (currently only supported with --for‐
126 mat=json and --format=sexp) and on successful decryption the
127 multipart/encrypted part will be replaced by the decrypted con‐
128 tent.
129 stash behaves like true, but upon successful decryption it will
131 also stash the message's session key in the database, and index
132 the cleartext of the message, enabling automatic decryption in
133 the future.
134 If auto, and a session key is already known for the message,
136 then it will be decrypted, but notmuch will not try to access
137 the user's keys.
138 Use false to avoid even automatic decryption.
140 Non-automatic decryption (stash or true, in the absence of a
142 stashed session key) expects a functioning gpg-agent(1) to pro‐
143 vide any needed credentials. Without one, the decryption will
144 fail.
145 Note: setting either true or stash here implies --verify.
147 Here is a table that summarizes each of these policies:
149 ┌──────────────┬───────┬──────┬──────┬───────┐
151 │ │ false │ auto │ true │ stash │
152 ├──────────────┼───────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
153 │Show cleart‐ │ │ X │ X │ X │
154 │ext if ses‐ │ │ │ │ │
155 │sion key is │ │ │ │ │
156 │already known │ │ │ │ │
157 ├──────────────┼───────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
158 │Use secret │ │ │ X │ X │
159 │keys to show │ │ │ │ │
160 │cleartext │ │ │ │ │
161 ├──────────────┼───────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
162 │Stash any │ │ │ │ X │
163 │newly recov‐ │ │ │ │ │
164 │ered session │ │ │ │ │
165 │keys, rein‐ │ │ │ │ │
166 │dexing mes‐ │ │ │ │ │
167 │sage if found │ │ │ │ │
168 └──────────────┴───────┴──────┴──────┴───────┘
169 Note: --decrypt=stash requires write access to the database.
171 Otherwise, notmuch show operates entirely in read-only mode.
172 Default: auto
174 --exclude=(true|false)
176 Specify whether to omit threads only matching search.ex‐
177 clude_tags from the search results (the default) or not. In ei‐
178 ther case the excluded message will be marked with the exclude
179 flag (except when output=mbox when there is nowhere to put the
180 flag).
181 If --entire-thread is specified then complete threads are re‐
183 turned regardless (with the excluded flag being set when appro‐
184 priate) but threads that only match in an excluded message are
185 not returned when --exclude=true.
186 The default is --exclude=true.
188 --body=(true|false)
190 If true (the default) notmuch show includes the bodies of the
191 messages in the output; if false, bodies are omitted.
192 --body=false is only implemented for the text, json and sexp
193 formats and it is incompatible with --part > 0.
194 This is useful if the caller only needs the headers as body-less
196 output is much faster and substantially smaller.
197 --include-html
199 Include "text/html" parts as part of the output (currently only
200 supported with --format=text, --format=json and --format=sexp).
201 By default, unless --part=N is used to select a specific part or
202 --include-html is used to include all "text/html" parts, no part
203 with content type "text/html" is included in the output.
204 A common use of notmuch show is to display a single thread of email
206 messages. For this, use a search term of "thread:<thread-id>" as can be
207 seen in the first column of output from the notmuch-search(1) command.
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210 This command supports the following special exit status codes
211 20 The requested format version is too old.
213 21 The requested format version is too new.
215
217 notmuch(1), notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-dump(1), not‐
218 much-hooks(5), notmuch-insert(1), notmuch-new(1), notmuch-reply(1),
219 notmuch-restore(1), notmuch-search(1), notmuch-search-terms(7), not‐
220 much-tag(1)
221
223 Carl Worth and many others
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226 2009-2021, Carl Worth and many others
2270.34.1 Nov 03, 2021 NOTMUCH-SHOW(1)