[[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]]
#How to...
Some tips about how to do some useful things with notmuch, and the
various "third party" notmuch utilities.
* Print only filenames of a search
Given you have the python bindings installed (or simply set your
PYTHONPATH environment variable to point to the .../bindings/python
directory), this script will print the filenames of a matching
search:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys
import notmuch
search = " ".join(sys.argv[1:])
q = notmuch.Database().create_query(search)
for m in q.search_messages():
print m.get_filename()
* Sync notmuch tags and maildir flags
Some IMAP users rely on maildir flags that convey the status "seen",
"replied", "trashed", in order to synchronize the status of their
mail across mail clients (a [maildir
flag](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) is simply a defined part
of their filename). Notmuch will by default happily ignore those
flags and will never modify them either, as there is no built-in
support for sunchronizing your notmuch tags with your imap maildir
flags (seen, replied, trashed, etc). However there are currently 2
ways in which you can achieve synchronization.
[notmuchsync](http://spaetz.github.com/notmuchsync/) is a utility
that allows synchronization in either direction, as well as pruning
of deleted files.
The second solution allows for fast maildir flag to notmuch tag
synchronization (and only in that direction) requires patching the
notmuch source code. The patch has been posted in this mail
*id:1267450136-31749-1-git-send-email-Sebastian@SSpaeth.de* and can
be viewed as a [source diff in this git
repository](http://github.com/spaetz/notmuch-all-feature/commit/df3b087cefb85e9d16fd17540e348bcb854dd7ee).