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). Negative revi‐
149 sions are interpreted relative to the most recent database revi‐
150 sion (see count --lastmod). This is usually used in conjunction
151 with the --uuid argument to notmuch-search to find messages that
152 have changed since an earlier query.
153 query:<name>
155 The query: prefix allows queries to refer to previously saved
156 queries added with notmuch-config.
157 property:<key>=<value>
159 The property: prefix searches for messages with a particular
160 <key>=<value> property pair. Properties are used internally by
161 notmuch (and extensions) to add metadata to messages. A given
162 key can be present on a given message with several different
163 values. See notmuch-properties for more details.
164 sexp:<subquery>
166 The sexp: prefix allows subqueries in the format documented in
167 notmuch-sexp-queries. Note that subqueries containing spaces
168 must be quoted, and any embedded double quotes must be escaped
169 (see Quoting).
170 User defined prefixes are also supported, see notmuch-config for de‐
172 tails.
173 Operators
175 In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with
176 Boolean operators (and, or, not, and xor). Each term in the query will
177 be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no explicit operator is
178 provided (except that terms with a common prefix will be implicitly
179 combined with OR). The shorthand '-<term>' can be used for 'not
180 <term>' but unfortunately this does not work at the start of an expres‐
181 sion. Parentheses can also be used to control the combination of the
182 Boolean operators, but will have to be protected from interpretation by
183 the shell, (such as by putting quotation marks around any parenthesized
184 expression).
185 In addition to the standard boolean operators, Xapian provides several
187 operators specific to text searching.
188 notmuch search term1 NEAR term2
190 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2. The
192 threshold can be set like this:
193 notmuch search term1 NEAR/2 term2
195 The search
197 notmuch search term1 ADJ term2
199 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the
201 same order as in the query. The threshold can be set the same as with
202 NEAR:
203 notmuch search term1 ADJ/7 term2
205 Stemming
207 Stemming in notmuch means that these searches
208 notmuch search detailed
210 notmuch search details
211 notmuch search detail
212 will all return identical results, because Xapian first "reduces" the
214 term to the common stem (here 'detail') and then performs the search.
215 There are two ways to turn this off: a search for a capitalized word
217 will be performed unstemmed, so that one can search for "John" and not
218 get results for "Johnson"; phrase searches are also unstemmed (see be‐
219 low for details). Stemming is currently only supported for English.
220 Searches for words in other languages will be performed unstemmed.
221 Wildcards
223 It is possible to use a trailing '*' as a wildcard. A search for
224 'wildc*' will match 'wildcard', 'wildcat', etc.
225 Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes
227 Xapian (and hence notmuch) prefixes are either boolean, supporting ex‐
228 act matches like "tag:inbox" or probabilistic, supporting a more flexi‐
229 ble term based searching. Certain special prefixes are processed by
230 notmuch in a way not strictly fitting either of Xapian's built in
231 styles. The prefixes currently supported by notmuch are as follows.
232 Boolean
234 tag:, id:, thread:, folder:, path:, property:
235 Probabilistic
237 body:, to:, attachment:, mimetype:
238 Special
240 from:, query:, subject:, sexp:
241 Terms and phrases
243 In general Xapian distinguishes between lists of terms and phrases.
244 Phrases are indicated by double quotes (but beware you probably need to
245 protect those from your shell) and insist that those unstemmed words
246 occur in that order. One useful, but initially surprising feature is
247 that the following are equivalent ways to write the same phrase.
248 • "a list of words"
250 • a-list-of-words
252 • a/list/of/words
254 • a.list.of.words
256 Both parenthesised lists of terms and quoted phrases are ok with proba‐
258 bilistic prefixes such as to:, from:, and subject:. For prefixes sup‐
259 porting regex search, the parenthesised list should be quoted. In par‐
260 ticular
261 subject:"(pizza free)"
263 is equivalent to
265 subject:pizza and subject:free
267 Both of these will match a subject "Free Delicious Pizza" while
269 subject:"pizza free"
271 will not.
273 Quoting
275 Double quotes are also used by the notmuch query parser to protect
276 boolean terms, regular expressions, or subqueries containing spaces or
277 other special characters, e.g.
278 tag:"a tag"
280 folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"
282 thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}"
284 As with phrases, you need to protect the double quotes from the shell
286 e.g.
287 % notmuch search 'folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"'
289 % notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}" and thread:{to:mallory}'
290 Double quotes within query strings need to be doubled to escape them.
292 % notmuch search 'tag:"""quoted tag"""'
294 % notmuch search 'sexp:"(or ""wizard"" ""php"")"'
295
297 notmuch understands a variety of standard and natural ways of express‐
298 ing dates and times, both in absolute terms ("2012-10-24") and in rela‐
299 tive terms ("yesterday"). Any number of relative terms can be combined
300 ("1 hour 25 minutes") and an absolute date/time can be combined with
301 relative terms to further adjust it. A non-exhaustive description of
302 the syntax supported for absolute and relative terms is given below.
303 The range expression
305 date:<since>..<until>
306 The above expression restricts the results to only messages from
308 <since> to <until>, based on the Date: header.
309 <since> and <until> can describe imprecise times, such as "yesterday".
311 In this case, <since> is taken as the earliest time it could describe
312 (the beginning of yesterday) and <until> is taken as the latest time it
313 could describe (the end of yesterday). Similarly, date:january..febru‐
314 ary matches from the beginning of January to the end of February.
315 If specifying a time range using timestamps in conjunction with the
317 date prefix, each timestamp must be preceded by @ (ASCII hex 40). As
318 above, each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds
319 since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. For example:
320 date:@<initial-timestamp>..@<final-timestamp>
321 Currently, spaces in range expressions are not supported. You can re‐
323 place the spaces with '_', or (in most cases) '-', or (in some cases)
324 leave the spaces out altogether. Examples in this man page use spaces
325 for clarity.
326 Open-ended ranges are supported. I.e. it's possible to specify
328 date:..<until> or date:<since>.. to not limit the start or end time,
329 respectively.
330 Single expression
332 date:<expr> works as a shorthand for date:<expr>..<expr>. For example,
333 date:monday matches from the beginning of Monday until the end of Mon‐
334 day.
335 Relative date and time
337 [N|number] (years|months|weeks|days|hours|hrs|minutes|mins|sec‐
338 onds|secs) [...]
339 All refer to past, can be repeated and will be accumulated.
341 Units can be abbreviated to any length, with the otherwise ambiguous
343 single m being m for minutes and M for months.
344 Number can also be written out one, two, ..., ten, dozen, hundred. Ad‐
346 ditionally, the unit may be preceded by "last" or "this" (e.g., "last
347 week" or "this month").
348 When combined with absolute date and time, the relative date and time
350 specification will be relative from the specified absolute date and
351 time.
352 Examples: 5M2d, two weeks
354 Supported absolute time formats
356 • H[H]:MM[:SS] [(am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)]
357 • H[H] (am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)
359 • HHMMSS
361 • now
363 • noon
365 • midnight
367 • Examples: 17:05, 5pm
369 Supported absolute date formats
371 • YYYY-MM[-DD]
372 • DD-MM[-[YY]YY]
374 • MM-YYYY
376 • M[M]/D[D][/[YY]YY]
378 • M[M]/YYYY
380 • D[D].M[M][.[YY]YY]
382 • D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] Mon[thname] [YYYY]
384 • Mon[thname] D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] [YYYY]
386 • Wee[kday]
388 Month names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
390 Weekday names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
392 Examples: 2012-07-31, 31-07-2012, 7/31/2012, August 3
394 Time zones
396 • (+|-)HH:MM
397 • (+|-)HH[MM]
399 Some time zone codes, e.g. UTC, EET.
401
403 notmuch, notmuch-config, notmuch-count, notmuch-dump, notmuch-hooks,
404 notmuch-insert, notmuch-new, notmuch-properties, notmuch-reindex,
405 notmuch-reply, notmuch-restore, notmuch-search, notmuch-show,
406 notmuch-tag
407
409 Carl Worth and many others
410
412 2009-2023, Carl Worth and many others
4130.38 Sep 12, 2023 NOTMUCH-SEARCH-TERMS(7)