1 .. _notmuch-search-terms(7):
10 **notmuch** **count** [option ...] <*search-term*> ...
12 **notmuch** **dump** [--gzip] [--format=(batch-tag|sup)] [--output=<*file*>] [--] [<*search-term*> ...]
14 **notmuch** **reindex** [option ...] <*search-term*> ...
16 **notmuch** **search** [option ...] <*search-term*> ...
18 **notmuch** **show** [option ...] <*search-term*> ...
20 **notmuch** **tag** +<*tag*> ... -<*tag*> [--] <*search-term*> ...
25 Several notmuch commands accept a common syntax for search terms.
27 The search terms can consist of free-form text (and quoted phrases)
28 which will match all messages that contain all of the given
29 terms/phrases in the body, the subject, or any of the sender or
32 As a special case, a search string consisting of exactly a single
33 asterisk ("\*") will match all messages.
38 In addition to free text, the following prefixes can be used to force
39 terms to match against specific portions of an email, (where <brackets>
40 indicate user-supplied values).
42 Some of the prefixes with <regex> forms can be also used to restrict
43 the results to those whose value matches a regular expression (see
44 :manpage:`regex(7)`) delimited with //, for example::
46 notmuch search 'from:"/bob@.*[.]example[.]com/"'
48 body:<word-or-quoted-phrase>
49 Match terms in the body of messages.
51 from:<name-or-address> or from:/<regex>/
52 The **from:** prefix is used to match the name or address of
53 the sender of an email message.
56 The **to:** prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any
57 recipient of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).
59 subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase> or subject:/<regex>/
60 Any term prefixed with **subject:** will match only text from the
61 subject of an email. Searching for a phrase in the subject is
62 supported by including quotation marks around the phrase,
63 immediately following **subject:**.
66 The **attachment:** prefix can be used to search for specific
67 filenames (or extensions) of attachments to email messages.
70 The **mimetype:** prefix will be used to match text from the
71 content-types of MIME parts within email messages (as specified by
74 tag:<tag> or tag:/<regex>/ or is:<tag> or is:/<regex>/
75 For **tag:** and **is:** valid tag values include **inbox** and
76 **unread** by default for new messages added by
77 :any:`notmuch-new(1)` as well as any other tag values added
78 manually with :any:`notmuch-tag(1)`.
80 id:<message-id> or mid:<message-id> or mid:/<regex>/
81 For **id:** and **mid:**, message ID values are the literal
82 contents of the Message-ID: header of email messages, but without
83 the '<', '>' delimiters.
86 The **thread:** prefix can be used with the thread ID values that
87 are generated internally by notmuch (and do not appear in email
88 messages). These thread ID values can be seen in the first column
89 of output from :any:`notmuch-search(1)`
91 thread:{<notmuch query>}
92 Threads may be searched for indirectly by providing an arbitrary
93 notmuch query in **{}**. For example, the following returns
94 threads containing a message from mallory and one (not necessarily
95 the same message) with Subject containing the word "crypto".
99 % notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory}" and thread:"{subject:crypto}"'
101 The performance of such queries can vary wildly. To understand
102 this, the user should think of the query **thread:{<something>}**
103 as expanding to all of the thread IDs which match **<something>**;
104 notmuch then performs a second search using the expanded query.
106 path:<directory-path> or path:<directory-path>/** or path:/<regex>/
107 The **path:** prefix searches for email messages that are in
108 particular directories within the mail store. The directory must
109 be specified relative to the top-level maildir (and without the
110 leading slash). By default, **path:** matches messages in the
111 specified directory only. The "/\*\*" suffix can be used to match
112 messages in the specified directory and all its subdirectories
113 recursively. **path:""** matches messages in the root of the mail
114 store and, likewise, **path:\*\*** matches all messages.
116 **path:** will find a message if *any* copy of that message is in
117 the specific directory.
119 folder:<maildir-folder> or folder:/<regex>/
120 The **folder:** prefix searches for email messages by maildir or
121 MH folder. For MH-style folders, this is equivalent to
122 **path:**. For maildir, this includes messages in the "new" and
123 "cur" subdirectories. The exact syntax for maildir folders depends
124 on your mail configuration. For maildir++, **folder:""** matches
125 the inbox folder (which is the root in maildir++), other folder
126 names always start with ".", and nested folders are separated by
127 "."s, such as **folder:.classes.topology**. For "file system"
128 maildir, the inbox is typically **folder:INBOX** and nested
129 folders are separated by slashes, such as
130 **folder:classes/topology**.
132 **folder:** will find a message if *any* copy of that message is
133 in the specific folder.
135 date:<since>..<until> or date:<date>
136 The **date:** prefix can be used to restrict the results to only
137 messages within a particular time range (based on the Date:
140 See **DATE AND TIME SEARCH** below for details on the range
141 expression, and supported syntax for <since> and <until> date and
144 The time range can also be specified using timestamps without
145 including the date prefix using a syntax of:
147 <initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>
149 Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds
150 since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. Specifying a time range this way
151 is considered legacy and predates the date prefix.
153 lastmod:<initial-revision>..<final-revision>
154 The **lastmod:** prefix can be used to restrict the result by the
155 database revision number of when messages were last modified (tags
156 were added/removed or filenames changed). This is usually used in
157 conjunction with the ``--uuid`` argument to
158 :any:`notmuch-search(1)` to find messages that have changed since
162 The **query:** prefix allows queries to refer to previously saved
163 queries added with :any:`notmuch-config(1)`.
165 property:<key>=<value>
166 The **property:** prefix searches for messages with a particular
167 <key>=<value> property pair. Properties are used internally by
168 notmuch (and extensions) to add metadata to messages. A given key
169 can be present on a given message with several different values.
170 See :any:`notmuch-properties(7)` for more details.
173 The **sexp:** prefix allows subqueries in the format
174 documented in :any:`notmuch-sexp-queries(7)`. Note that subqueries containing
175 spaces must be quoted, and any embedded double quotes must be escaped
176 (see :any:`quoting`).
178 User defined prefixes are also supported, see :any:`notmuch-config(1)` for
184 In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with
185 Boolean operators (**and**, **or**, **not**, and **xor**). Each term
186 in the query will be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no
187 explicit operator is provided (except that terms with a common prefix
188 will be implicitly combined with OR). The shorthand '-<term>' can be
189 used for 'not <term>' but unfortunately this does not work at the
190 start of an expression. Parentheses can also be used to control the
191 combination of the Boolean operators, but will have to be protected
192 from interpretation by the shell, (such as by putting quotation marks
193 around any parenthesized expression).
195 In addition to the standard boolean operators, Xapian provides several
196 operators specific to text searching.
200 notmuch search term1 NEAR term2
202 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2. The
203 threshold can be set like this:
207 notmuch search term1 NEAR/2 term2
213 notmuch search term1 ADJ term2
215 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the
216 same order as in the query. The threshold can be set the same as with
221 notmuch search term1 ADJ/7 term2
227 **Stemming** in notmuch means that these searches
231 notmuch search detailed
232 notmuch search details
233 notmuch search detail
235 will all return identical results, because Xapian first "reduces" the
236 term to the common stem (here 'detail') and then performs the search.
238 There are two ways to turn this off: a search for a capitalized word
239 will be performed unstemmed, so that one can search for "John" and not
240 get results for "Johnson"; phrase searches are also unstemmed (see
241 below for details). Stemming is currently only supported for
242 English. Searches for words in other languages will be performed unstemmed.
247 It is possible to use a trailing '\*' as a wildcard. A search for
248 'wildc\*' will match 'wildcard', 'wildcat', etc.
251 Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes
252 ----------------------------------
254 Xapian (and hence notmuch) prefixes are either **boolean**, supporting
255 exact matches like "tag:inbox" or **probabilistic**, supporting a more
256 flexible **term** based searching. Certain **special** prefixes are
257 processed by notmuch in a way not strictly fitting either of Xapian's
258 built in styles. The prefixes currently supported by notmuch are as
262 **tag:**, **id:**, **thread:**, **folder:**, **path:**, **property:**
264 **body:**, **to:**, **attachment:**, **mimetype:**
266 **from:**, **query:**, **subject:**, **sexp:**
271 In general Xapian distinguishes between lists of terms and
272 **phrases**. Phrases are indicated by double quotes (but beware you
273 probably need to protect those from your shell) and insist that those
274 unstemmed words occur in that order. One useful, but initially
275 surprising feature is that the following are equivalent ways to write
283 Both parenthesised lists of terms and quoted phrases are ok with
284 probabilistic prefixes such as **to:**, **from:**, and **subject:**.
285 For prefixes supporting regex search, the parenthesised list should be
286 quoted. In particular
290 subject:"(pizza free)"
296 subject:pizza and subject:free
298 Both of these will match a subject "Free Delicious Pizza" while
311 Double quotes are also used by the notmuch query parser to protect
312 boolean terms, regular expressions, or subqueries containing spaces or
313 other special characters, e.g.
321 folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"
325 thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}"
327 As with phrases, you need to protect the double quotes from the shell
332 % notmuch search 'folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"'
333 % notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}" and thread:{to:mallory}'
335 Double quotes within query strings need to be doubled to escape them.
339 % notmuch search 'tag:"""quoted tag"""'
340 % notmuch search 'sexp:"(or ""wizard"" ""php"")"'
345 notmuch understands a variety of standard and natural ways of expressing
346 dates and times, both in absolute terms ("2012-10-24") and in relative
347 terms ("yesterday"). Any number of relative terms can be combined ("1
348 hour 25 minutes") and an absolute date/time can be combined with
349 relative terms to further adjust it. A non-exhaustive description of the
350 syntax supported for absolute and relative terms is given below.
355 date:<since>..<until>
357 The above expression restricts the results to only messages from <since>
358 to <until>, based on the Date: header.
360 <since> and <until> can describe imprecise times, such as "yesterday".
361 In this case, <since> is taken as the earliest time it could describe
362 (the beginning of yesterday) and <until> is taken as the latest time it
363 could describe (the end of yesterday). Similarly, date:january..february
364 matches from the beginning of January to the end of February.
366 If specifying a time range using timestamps in conjunction with the
367 date prefix, each timestamp must be preceded by @ (ASCII hex 40). As
368 above, each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds
369 since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. For example:
371 date:@<initial-timestamp>..@<final-timestamp>
373 Currently, spaces in range expressions are not supported. You can
374 replace the spaces with '\_', or (in most cases) '-', or (in some cases)
375 leave the spaces out altogether. Examples in this man page use spaces
378 Open-ended ranges are supported. I.e. it's possible to specify
379 date:..<until> or date:<since>.. to not limit the start or
380 end time, respectively.
385 date:<expr> works as a shorthand for date:<expr>..<expr>.
386 For example, date:monday matches from the beginning of Monday until
389 Relative date and time
390 ----------------------
393 (years\|months\|weeks\|days\|hours\|hrs\|minutes\|mins\|seconds\|secs)
396 All refer to past, can be repeated and will be accumulated.
398 Units can be abbreviated to any length, with the otherwise ambiguous
399 single m being m for minutes and M for months.
401 Number can also be written out one, two, ..., ten, dozen, hundred.
402 Additionally, the unit may be preceded by "last" or "this" (e.g., "last
403 week" or "this month").
405 When combined with absolute date and time, the relative date and time
406 specification will be relative from the specified absolute date and
409 Examples: 5M2d, two weeks
411 Supported absolute time formats
412 -------------------------------
414 - H[H]:MM[:SS] [(am\|a.m.\|pm\|p.m.)]
416 - H[H] (am\|a.m.\|pm\|p.m.)
426 - Examples: 17:05, 5pm
428 Supported absolute date formats
429 -------------------------------
443 - D[D][(st\|nd\|rd\|th)] Mon[thname] [YYYY]
445 - Mon[thname] D[D][(st\|nd\|rd\|th)] [YYYY]
449 Month names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
451 Weekday names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
453 Examples: 2012-07-31, 31-07-2012, 7/31/2012, August 3
462 Some time zone codes, e.g. UTC, EET.
468 :any:`notmuch-config(1)`,
469 :any:`notmuch-count(1)`,
470 :any:`notmuch-dump(1)`,
471 :any:`notmuch-hooks(5)`,
472 :any:`notmuch-insert(1)`,
473 :any:`notmuch-new(1)`,
474 :any:`notmuch-properties(7)`,
475 :any:`notmuch-reindex(1)`,
476 :any:`notmuch-reply(1)`,
477 :any:`notmuch-restore(1)`,
478 :any:`notmuch-search(1)`,
479 :any:`notmuch-show(1)`,
480 :any:`notmuch-tag(1)`