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 as‐
31 terisk ("*") 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 re‐
106 cursively. 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 al‐
119 ways 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.
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 for more details.
162 sexp:<subquery>
164 The sexp: prefix allows subqueries in the format documented in
165 notmuch-sexp-queries. Note that subqueries containing spaces
166 must be quoted, and any embedded double quotes must be escaped
167 (see Quoting).
168 User defined prefixes are also supported, see notmuch-config for de‐
170 tails.
171 Operators
173 In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with
174 Boolean operators (and, or, not, and xor). Each term in the query will
175 be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no explicit operator is
176 provided (except that terms with a common prefix will be implicitly
177 combined with OR). The shorthand '-<term>' can be used for 'not
178 <term>' but unfortunately this does not work at the start of an expres‐
179 sion. Parentheses can also be used to control the combination of the
180 Boolean operators, but will have to be protected from interpretation by
181 the shell, (such as by putting quotation marks around any parenthesized
182 expression).
183 In addition to the standard boolean operators, Xapian provides several
185 operators specific to text searching.
186 notmuch search term1 NEAR term2
188 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2. The
190 threshold can be set like this:
191 notmuch search term1 NEAR/2 term2
193 The search
195 notmuch search term1 ADJ term2
197 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the
199 same order as in the query. The threshold can be set the same as with
200 NEAR:
201 notmuch search term1 ADJ/7 term2
203 Stemming
205 Stemming in notmuch means that these searches
206 notmuch search detailed
208 notmuch search details
209 notmuch search detail
210 will all return identical results, because Xapian first "reduces" the
212 term to the common stem (here 'detail') and then performs the search.
213 There are two ways to turn this off: a search for a capitalized word
215 will be performed unstemmed, so that one can search for "John" and not
216 get results for "Johnson"; phrase searches are also unstemmed (see be‐
217 low for details). Stemming is currently only supported for English.
218 Searches for words in other languages will be performed unstemmed.
219 Wildcards
221 It is possible to use a trailing '*' as a wildcard. A search for
222 'wildc*' will match 'wildcard', 'wildcat', etc.
223 Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes
225 Xapian (and hence notmuch) prefixes are either boolean, supporting ex‐
226 act matches like "tag:inbox" or probabilistic, supporting a more flexi‐
227 ble term based searching. Certain special prefixes are processed by
228 notmuch in a way not strictly fitting either of Xapian's built in
229 styles. The prefixes currently supported by notmuch are as follows.
230 Boolean
232 tag:, id:, thread:, folder:, path:, property:
233 Probabilistic
235 body:, to:, attachment:, mimetype:
236 Special
238 from:, query:, subject:, sexp:
239 Terms and phrases
241 In general Xapian distinguishes between lists of terms and phrases.
242 Phrases are indicated by double quotes (but beware you probably need to
243 protect those from your shell) and insist that those unstemmed words
244 occur in that order. One useful, but initially surprising feature is
245 that the following are equivalent ways to write the same phrase.
246 • "a list of words"
248 • a-list-of-words
250 • a/list/of/words
252 • a.list.of.words
254 Both parenthesised lists of terms and quoted phrases are ok with proba‐
256 bilistic prefixes such as to:, from:, and subject:. For prefixes sup‐
257 porting regex search, the parenthesised list should be quoted. In par‐
258 ticular
259 subject:"(pizza free)"
261 is equivalent to
263 subject:pizza and subject:free
265 Both of these will match a subject "Free Delicious Pizza" while
267 subject:"pizza free"
269 will not.
271 Quoting
273 Double quotes are also used by the notmuch query parser to protect
274 boolean terms, regular expressions, or subqueries containing spaces or
275 other special characters, e.g.
276 tag:"a tag"
278 folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"
280 thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}"
282 As with phrases, you need to protect the double quotes from the shell
284 e.g.
285 % notmuch search 'folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"'
287 % notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}" and thread:{to:mallory}'
288 Double quotes within query strings need to be doubled to escape them.
290 % notmuch search 'tag:"""quoted tag"""'
292 % notmuch search 'sexp:"(or ""wizard"" ""php"")"'
293
295 notmuch understands a variety of standard and natural ways of express‐
296 ing dates and times, both in absolute terms ("2012-10-24") and in rela‐
297 tive terms ("yesterday"). Any number of relative terms can be combined
298 ("1 hour 25 minutes") and an absolute date/time can be combined with
299 relative terms to further adjust it. A non-exhaustive description of
300 the syntax supported for absolute and relative terms is given below.
301 The range expression
303 date:<since>..<until>
304 The above expression restricts the results to only messages from
306 <since> to <until>, based on the Date: header.
307 <since> and <until> can describe imprecise times, such as "yesterday".
309 In this case, <since> is taken as the earliest time it could describe
310 (the beginning of yesterday) and <until> is taken as the latest time it
311 could describe (the end of yesterday). Similarly, date:january..febru‐
312 ary matches from the beginning of January to the end of February.
313 If specifying a time range using timestamps in conjunction with the
315 date prefix, each timestamp must be preceded by @ (ASCII hex 40). As
316 above, each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds
317 since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. For example:
318 date:@<initial-timestamp>..@<final-timestamp>
319 Currently, spaces in range expressions are not supported. You can re‐
321 place the spaces with '_', or (in most cases) '-', or (in some cases)
322 leave the spaces out altogether. Examples in this man page use spaces
323 for clarity.
324 Open-ended ranges are supported. I.e. it's possible to specify
326 date:..<until> or date:<since>.. to not limit the start or end time,
327 respectively.
328 Single expression
330 date:<expr> works as a shorthand for date:<expr>..<expr>. For example,
331 date:monday matches from the beginning of Monday until the end of Mon‐
332 day.
333 Relative date and time
335 [N|number] (years|months|weeks|days|hours|hrs|minutes|mins|sec‐
336 onds|secs) [...]
337 All refer to past, can be repeated and will be accumulated.
339 Units can be abbreviated to any length, with the otherwise ambiguous
341 single m being m for minutes and M for months.
342 Number can also be written out one, two, ..., ten, dozen, hundred. Ad‐
344 ditionally, the unit may be preceded by "last" or "this" (e.g., "last
345 week" or "this month").
346 When combined with absolute date and time, the relative date and time
348 specification will be relative from the specified absolute date and
349 time.
350 Examples: 5M2d, two weeks
352 Supported absolute time formats
354 • H[H]:MM[:SS] [(am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)]
355 • H[H] (am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)
357 • HHMMSS
359 • now
361 • noon
363 • midnight
365 • Examples: 17:05, 5pm
367 Supported absolute date formats
369 • YYYY-MM[-DD]
370 • DD-MM[-[YY]YY]
372 • MM-YYYY
374 • M[M]/D[D][/[YY]YY]
376 • M[M]/YYYY
378 • D[D].M[M][.[YY]YY]
380 • D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] Mon[thname] [YYYY]
382 • Mon[thname] D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] [YYYY]
384 • Wee[kday]
386 Month names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
388 Weekday names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
390 Examples: 2012-07-31, 31-07-2012, 7/31/2012, August 3
392 Time zones
394 • (+|-)HH:MM
395 • (+|-)HH[MM]
397 Some time zone codes, e.g. UTC, EET.
399
401 notmuch, notmuch-config, notmuch-count, notmuch-dump, notmuch-hooks,
402 notmuch-insert, notmuch-new, notmuch-properties, notmuch-reindex,
403 notmuch-reply, notmuch-restore, notmuch-search, notmuch-show,
404 notmuch-tag
405
407 Carl Worth and many others
408
410 2009-2023, Carl Worth and many others
4110.37 Jan 19, 2023 NOTMUCH-SEARCH-TERMS(7)