From b6429fa5333e6c8f474af784d6fd9f005c623d65 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: David Bremner Date: Sat, 28 May 2022 07:32:08 -0300 Subject: [PATCH] discuss the "why not regex everywhere" question --- faq.mdwn | 11 +++++++++++ 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+) diff --git a/faq.mdwn b/faq.mdwn index 92a2ef6..71c9ff8 100644 --- a/faq.mdwn +++ b/faq.mdwn @@ -69,6 +69,17 @@ searches. Punctuation is mostly ignored. The boolean prefix searches (see Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes in the man page), such as tag: or path: searches, need an exact match. +For [specific +fields](https://notmuchmail.org/doc/latest/man7/notmuch-search-terms.html#search-prefixes) +it is possible to use regex searches (although these are often +noticeably slower than native Xapian queries). The limited set of +fields is a quirk of implementation which requires a Xapian "value +slot" in the database schema. Adding regex support for more fields to +would require of adding more value slots to the schema. The +performance impact of that needs to be experimentally evaluated, and +assuming it is not too bad, some database upgrade code would need to +be written. + ## How do I search for folders or paths with spaces? The spaces in the names must be escaped. For example if you use bash or zsh, -- 2.43.0