1 <h1>NOTMUCH-SEARCH-TERMS(7)</h1>
5 notmuch-search-terms - syntax for notmuch queries
10 <b>notmuch</b> <b>count</b> [option ...] <<u>search-term</u>> ...
12 <b>notmuch</b> <b>dump</b> [--format=(batch-tag|sup)] [--] [--output=<<u>file</u>>] [--]
13 [<<u>search-term</u>> ...]
15 <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b> [option ...] <<u>search-term</u>> ...
17 <b>notmuch</b> <b>show</b> [option ...] <<u>search-term</u>> ...
19 <b>notmuch</b> <b>tag</b> +<<u>tag</u>> ... -<<u>tag</u>> [--] <<u>search-term</u>> ...
24 Several notmuch commands accept a common syntax for search terms.
26 The search terms can consist of free-form text (and quoted phrases)
27 which will match all messages that contain all of the given
28 terms/phrases in the body, the subject, or any of the sender or recipi‐
31 As a special case, a search string consisting of exactly a single
32 asterisk ("*") will match all messages.
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):
38 · from:<name-or-address>
40 · to:<name-or-address>
42 · subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase>
44 · attachment:<word>
46 · mimetype:<word>
48 · tag:<tag> (or is:<tag>)
50 · id:<message-id>
52 · thread:<thread-id>
54 · folder:<maildir-folder>
56 · path:<directory-path> or path:<directory-path>/**
58 · date:<since>..<until>
60 The <b>from:</b> prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender of
63 The <b>to:</b> prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any recipient
64 of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).
66 Any term prefixed with <b>subject:</b> will match only text from the subject
67 of an email. Searching for a phrase in the subject is supported by
68 including quotation marks around the phrase, immediately following <b>sub-</b>
71 The <b>attachment:</b> prefix can be used to search for specific filenames (or
72 extensions) of attachments to email messages.
74 The <b>mimetype:</b> prefix will be used to match text from the content-types
75 of MIME parts within email messages (as specified by the sender).
77 For <b>tag:</b> and <b>is:</b> valid tag values include <b>inbox</b> and <b>unread</b> by default
78 for new messages added by <b>notmuch</b> <b>new</b> as well as any other tag values
79 added manually with <b>notmuch</b> <b>tag</b>.
81 For <b>id:</b>, message ID values are the literal contents of the Message-ID:
82 header of email messages, but without the '<', '>' delimiters.
84 The <b>thread:</b> prefix can be used with the thread ID values that are gen‐
85 erated internally by notmuch (and do not appear in email messages).
86 These thread ID values can be seen in the first column of output from
87 <b>notmuch</b> <b>search</b>
89 The <b>path:</b> prefix searches for email messages that are in particular
90 directories within the mail store. The directory must be specified rel‐
91 ative to the top-level maildir (and without the leading slash). By
92 default, <b>path:</b> matches messages in the specified directory only. The
93 "/**" suffix can be used to match messages in the specified directory
94 and all its subdirectories recursively. <b>path:""</b> matches messages in
95 the root of the mail store and, likewise, <b>path:**</b> matches all messages.
97 The <b>folder:</b> prefix searches for email messages by maildir or MH folder.
98 For MH-style folders, this is equivalent to <b>path:</b>. For maildir, this
99 includes messages in the "new" and "cur" subdirectories. The exact syn‐
100 tax for maildir folders depends on your mail configuration. For
101 maildir++, <b>folder:""</b> matches the inbox folder (which is the root in
102 maildir++), other folder names always start with ".", and nested fold‐
103 ers are separated by "."s, such as <b>folder:.classes.topology</b>. For "file
104 system" maildir, the inbox is typically <b>folder:INBOX</b> and nested folders
105 are separated by slashes, such as <b>folder:classes/topology</b>.
107 Both <b>path:</b> and <b>folder:</b> will find a message if <u>any</u> copy of that message
108 is in the specific directory/folder.
110 The <b>date:</b> prefix can be used to restrict the results to only messages
111 within a particular time range (based on the Date: header) with a range
114 date:<since>..<until>
116 See <b>DATE</b> <b>AND</b> <b>TIME</b> <b>SEARCH</b> below for details on the range expression, and
117 supported syntax for <since> and <until> date and time expressions.
119 The time range can also be specified using timestamps with a syntax of:
121 <initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>
123 Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds since
124 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
127 <h3> Operators</h3>
129 In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with
130 Boolean operators (<b>and</b>, <b>or</b>, <b>not</b>, and <b>xor</b>). Each term in the query will
131 be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no explicit operator is
132 provided (except that terms with a common prefix will be implicitly
133 combined with OR). The shorthand '-<term>' can be used for 'not
134 <term>' but unfortunately this does not work at the start of an expres‐
135 sion. Parentheses can also be used to control the combination of the
136 Boolean operators, but will have to be protected from interpretation by
137 the shell, (such as by putting quotation marks around any parenthesized
140 In addition to the standard boolean operators, Xapian provides several
141 operators specific to text searching.
143 notmuch search term1 NEAR term2
145 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2. The
146 threshold can be set like this:
148 notmuch search term1 NEAR/2 term2
152 notmuch search term1 ADJ term2
154 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the
155 same order as in the query. The threshold can be set the same as with
158 notmuch search term1 ADJ/7 term2
161 <h3> Stemming</h3>
163 <b>Stemming</b> in notmuch means that these searches
165 notmuch search detailed
166 notmuch search details
167 notmuch search detail
169 will all return identical results, because Xapian first "reduces" the
170 term to the common stem (here 'detail') and then performs the search.
172 There are two ways to turn this off: a search for a capitalized word
173 will be performed unstemmed, so that one can search for "John" and not
174 get results for "Johnson"; phrase searches are also unstemmed (see
175 below for details). Stemming is currently only supported for English.
176 Searches for words in other languages will be performed unstemmed.
179 <h3> Wildcards</h3>
181 It is possible to use a trailing '*' as a wildcard. A search for
182 'wildc*' will match 'wildcard', 'wildcat', etc.
185 <h3> Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes</h3>
187 Xapian (and hence notmuch) prefixes are either <b>boolean</b>, supporting
188 exact matches like "<u>tag:inbox</u>" or <b>probabilistic</b>, supporting a more
189 flexible <b>term</b> based searching. The prefixes currently supported by not‐
192 ┌───────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
194 ├───────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
197 │ <b>thread:</b> <b>folder:</b> │ <b>subject:</b> <b>attach‐</b> │
198 │ <b>path:</b> │ <b>ment:</b> <b>mimetype:</b> │
199 └───────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
202 <h3> Terms and phrases</h3>
204 In general Xapian distinguishes between lists of terms and <b>phrases</b>.
205 Phrases are indicated by double quotes (but beware you probably need to
206 protect those from your shell) and insist that those unstemmed words
207 occur in that order. One useful, but initially surprising feature is
208 that the following are equivalant ways to write the same phrase.
210 · "a list of words"
218 Both parenthesised lists of terms and quoted phrases are ok with proba‐
219 bilisitic prefixes such as <b>to:</b>, <b>from:</b>, and <b>subject:</b>. In particular
225 subject:pizza and subject:free
227 Both of these will match a subject "Free Delicious Pizza" while
229 subject:"pizza free"
234 <h2>DATE AND TIME SEARCH</h2>
236 notmuch understands a variety of standard and natural ways of express‐
237 ing dates and times, both in absolute terms ("2012-10-24") and in rela‐
238 tive terms ("yesterday"). Any number of relative terms can be combined
239 ("1 hour 25 minutes") and an absolute date/time can be combined with
240 relative terms to further adjust it. A non-exhaustive description of
241 the syntax supported for absolute and relative terms is given below.
244 <h3> The range expression</h3>
246 date:<since>..<until>
248 The above expression restricts the results to only messages from
249 <since> to <until>, based on the Date: header.
251 <since> and <until> can describe imprecise times, such as "yesterday".
252 In this case, <since> is taken as the earliest time it could describe
253 (the beginning of yesterday) and <until> is taken as the latest time it
254 could describe (the end of yesterday). Similarly, date:january..febru‐
255 ary matches from the beginning of January to the end of February.
257 Currently, we do not support spaces in range expressions. You can
258 replace the spaces with '_', or (in most cases) '-', or (in some cases)
259 leave the spaces out altogether. Examples in this man page use spaces
262 Open-ended ranges are supported (since Xapian 1.2.1), i.e. it's possi‐
263 ble to specify date:..<until> or date:<since>.. to not limit the start
264 or end time, respectively. Pre-1.2.1 Xapian does not report an error on
265 open ended ranges, but it does not work as expected either.
267 Entering date:expr without ".." (for example date:yesterday) won't
268 work, as it's not interpreted as a range expression at all. You can
269 achieve the expected result by duplicating the expr both sides of ".."
270 (for example date:yesterday..yesterday).
273 <h3> Relative date and time</h3>
275 [N|number] (years|months|weeks|days|hours|hrs|minutes|mins|sec‐
278 All refer to past, can be repeated and will be accumulated.
280 Units can be abbreviated to any length, with the otherwise ambiguous
281 single m being m for minutes and M for months.
283 Number can also be written out one, two, ..., ten, dozen, hundred.
284 Additionally, the unit may be preceded by "last" or "this" (e.g., "last
285 week" or "this month").
287 When combined with absolute date and time, the relative date and time
288 specification will be relative from the specified absolute date and
291 Examples: 5M2d, two weeks
294 <h3> Supported absolute time formats</h3>
296 · H[H]:MM[:SS] [(am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)]
298 · H[H] (am|a.m.|pm|p.m.)
308 · Examples: 17:05, 5pm
311 <h3> Supported absolute date formats</h3>
325 · D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] Mon[thname] [YYYY]
327 · Mon[thname] D[D][(st|nd|rd|th)] [YYYY]
331 Month names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
333 Weekday names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
335 Examples: 2012-07-31, 31-07-2012, 7/31/2012, August 3
338 <h3> Time zones</h3>
344 Some time zone codes, e.g. UTC, EET.
349 <a href='../notmuch-1/'>notmuch</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-config-1/'>notmuch-config</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-count-1/'>notmuch-count</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-dump-1/'>notmuch-dump</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-hooks-5/'>not‐</a>
350 <a href='../notmuch-hooks-5/'>much-hooks</a>(5), <a href='../notmuch-insert-1/'>notmuch-insert</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-new-1/'>notmuch-new</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-reply-1/'>notmuch-reply</a>(1),
351 <a href='../notmuch-restore-1/'>notmuch-restore</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-search-1/'>notmuch-search</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-show-1/'>notmuch-show</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-tag-1/'>notmuch-tag</a>(1)
356 Carl Worth and many others
361 2014, Carl Worth and many others