1NOTMUCH-SHOW(1)                     notmuch                    NOTMUCH-SHOW(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       notmuch-show - show messages matching the given search terms
7

SYNOPSIS

9       notmuch show [option ...] <search-term> ...
10

DESCRIPTION

12       Shows all messages matching the search terms.
13
14       See  notmuch-search-terms  for  details  of  the  supported  syntax for
15       <search-terms>.
16
17       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
23       Supported options for show include
24
25       --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
30       --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
36       --format=(text|json|sexp|mbox|raw)
37
38              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
48              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
59              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
66              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
75              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
80                     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
85                     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
92       --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
97       --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
104              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
108       --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
113              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
117              By  default,  results will be displayed in reverse chronological
118              order, (that is, the newest results will be displayed first).
119
120       --verify
121              Compute and report the validity of any MIME cryptographic signa‐
122              tures  found  in  the selected content (e.g., "multipart/signed"
123              parts). Status of the signature will be reported (currently only
124              supported  with --format=json and --format=sexp), and the multi‐
125              part/signed part will be replaced by the signed data.
126
127       --decrypt=(false|auto|true|stash)
128              If true, decrypt any MIME encrypted parts found in the  selected
129              content  (e.g.,  "multipart/encrypted" parts). Status of the de‐
130              cryption will be reported (currently only supported with  --for‐
131              mat=json  and  --format=sexp)  and  on successful decryption the
132              multipart/encrypted part will be replaced by the decrypted  con‐
133              tent.
134
135              stash  behaves like true, but upon successful decryption it will
136              also stash the message's session key in the database, and  index
137              the  cleartext  of the message, enabling automatic decryption in
138              the future.
139
140              If auto, and a session key is already  known  for  the  message,
141              then  it  will  be decrypted, but notmuch will not try to access
142              the user's keys.
143
144              Use false to avoid even automatic decryption.
145
146              Non-automatic decryption (stash or true, in  the  absence  of  a
147              stashed  session key) expects a functioning gpg-agent(1) to pro‐
148              vide any needed credentials. Without one,  the  decryption  will
149              fail.
150
151              Note: setting either true or stash here implies --verify.
152
153              Here is a table that summarizes each of these policies:
154
155                       ┌──────────────┬───────┬──────┬──────┬───────┐
156                       │              │ false │ auto │ true │ stash │
157                       ├──────────────┼───────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
158                       │Show  cleart‐ │       │ X    │ X    │ X     │
159                       │ext  if  ses‐ │       │      │      │       │
160                       │sion  key  is │       │      │      │       │
161                       │already known │       │      │      │       │
162                       ├──────────────┼───────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
163                       │Use    secret │       │      │ X    │ X     │
164                       │keys  to show │       │      │      │       │
165                       │cleartext     │       │      │      │       │
166                       ├──────────────┼───────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
167                       │Stash     any │       │      │      │ X     │
168                       │newly  recov‐ │       │      │      │       │
169                       │ered  session │       │      │      │       │
170                       │keys,   rein‐ │       │      │      │       │
171                       │dexing   mes‐ │       │      │      │       │
172                       │sage if found │       │      │      │       │
173                       └──────────────┴───────┴──────┴──────┴───────┘
174
175              Note:  --decrypt=stash  requires  write  access to the database.
176              Otherwise, notmuch show operates entirely in read-only mode.
177
178              Default: auto
179
180       --exclude=(true|false)
181              Specify  whether  to  omit  threads  only  matching   search.ex‐
182              clude_tags  from the search results (the default) or not. In ei‐
183              ther case the excluded message will be marked with  the  exclude
184              flag  (except  when output=mbox when there is nowhere to put the
185              flag).
186
187              If --entire-thread is specified then complete  threads  are  re‐
188              turned  regardless (with the excluded flag being set when appro‐
189              priate) but threads that only match in an excluded  message  are
190              not returned when --exclude=true.
191
192              The default is --exclude=true.
193
194       --body=(true|false)
195              If  true  (the  default) notmuch show includes the bodies of the
196              messages  in  the  output;  if  false,   bodies   are   omitted.
197              --body=false  is  only  implemented  for the text, json and sexp
198              formats and it is incompatible with --part > 0.
199
200              This is useful if the caller only needs the headers as body-less
201              output is much faster and substantially smaller.
202
203       --include-html
204              Include  "text/html" parts as part of the output (currently only
205              supported with --format=text, --format=json and  --format=sexp).
206              By default, unless --part=N is used to select a specific part or
207              --include-html is used to include all "text/html" parts, no part
208              with content type "text/html" is included in the output.
209
210       A  common  use  of  notmuch show is to display a single thread of email
211       messages. For this, use a search term of "thread:<thread-id>" as can be
212       seen in the first column of output from the notmuch-search command.
213

CONFIGURATION

215       Structured  output (json / sexp) is influenced by the configuration op‐
216       tion show.extra_headers. See notmuch-config for details.
217

EXIT STATUS

219       This command supports the following special exit status codes
220
221       20     The requested format version is too old.
222
223       21     The requested format version is too new.
224

SEE ALSO

226       notmuch, notmuch-config,  notmuch-count,  notmuch-dump,  notmuch-hooks,
227       notmuch-insert,     notmuch-new,     notmuch-reply,    notmuch-restore,
228       notmuch-search, notmuch-search-terms, notmuch-tag
229

AUTHOR

231       Carl Worth and many others
232
234       2009-2022, Carl Worth and many others
235
236
237
238
2390.37                             Aug 22, 2022                  NOTMUCH-SHOW(1)
Impressum