NOTMUCH-SEARCH-TERMS(7) 				 Miscellaneous Information Manual				   NOTMUCH-SEARCH-TERMS(7)

NAME

       notmuch-search-terms - Syntax for notmuch queries

SYNOPSIS

       notmuch count [options...]  <search-term>...

       notmuch dump [ <filename> ] [--] [ <search-term>...]

       notmuch search [options...] <search-term>...

       notmuch show [options...] <search-term>...

       notmuch tag +<tag>|-<tag> [...] [--] <search-term>...

DESCRIPTION

       Several notmuch commands accept a common syntax for search terms.

       The  search  terms  can	consist  of  free-form	text  (and  quoted  phrases)  which  will match all messages that contain all of the given
       terms/phrases in the body, the subject, or any of the sender or recipient headers.

       As a special case, a search string consisting of exactly a single asterisk ("*") will match all messages.

       In addition to free text, the following prefixes can be used to force terms to match against specific portions of an email, (where  <brack-
       ets> indicate user-supplied values):

	    from:<name-or-address>

	    to:<name-or-address>

	    subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase>

	    attachment:<word>

	    tag:<tag> (or is:<tag>)

	    id:<message-id>

	    thread:<thread-id>

	    folder:<directory-path>

       The from: prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender of an email message.

       The to: prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any recipient of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).

       Any  term  prefixed  with subject: will match only text from the subject of an email. Searching for a phrase in the subject is supported by
       including quotation marks around the phrase, immediately following subject:.

       The attachment: prefix can be used to search for specific filenames (or extensions) of attachments to email messages.

       For tag: and is: valid tag values include inbox and unread by default for new messages added by notmuch new as well as any other tag values
       added manually with notmuch tag.

       For id:, message ID values are the literal contents of the Message-ID: header of email messages, but without the '<', '>' delimiters.

       The  thread:  prefix  can be used with the thread ID values that are generated internally by notmuch (and do not appear in email messages).
       These thread ID values can be seen in the first column of output from notmuch search

       The folder: prefix can be used to search for email message files that are contained within particular directories within  the  mail  store.
       Only the directory components below the top-level mail database path are available to be searched.

       In  addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with Boolean operators ( and, or, not , etc.). Each term in the query will
       be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no explicit operator is provided, (except that terms with a common prefix  will  be	implicitly
       combined with OR until we get Xapian defect #402 fixed).

       Parentheses  can also be used to control the combination of the Boolean operators, but will have to be protected from interpretation by the
       shell, (such as by putting quotation marks around any parenthesized expression).

       Finally, results can be restricted to only messages within a particular time range, (based on the Date: header) with a syntax of:

	    <initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>

       Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. This is  not  the  most  convenient  means	of
       expressing  date ranges, but until notmuch is fixed to accept a more convenient form, one can use the date program to construct timestamps.
       For example, with the bash shell the following syntax would specify a date range to return messages from 2009-10-01 until the current time:

	    $(date +%s -d 2009-10-01)..$(date +%s)

SEE ALSO

       notmuch(1), notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-dump(1), notmuch-hooks(5), notmuch-new(1),  notmuch-reply(1),  notmuch-restore(1),
       notmuch-search(1), notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1)

Notmuch 0.13.2							    2012-06-01						   NOTMUCH-SEARCH-TERMS(7)