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Searching
mairix [ -v|--verbose ] [ -f|--rcfile mairixrc ] [ -r|--raw-output ] [
-x|--excerpt-output ] [ -o|--mfolder mfolder ] [ -a|--augment ] [
-t|--threads ] search-patterns
Other
mairix [ -h|--help ]
mairix [ -V|--version ]
mairix [ -d|--dump ]
It can operate with the following folder types
Special modes
-h, --help
Show usage summary and exit
A later indexing run without using this option will fix up any rescans that were missed due to its use.
Search options
-a, --augment
Append newly matches messages to the current mfolder instead of
creating the mfolder from scratch.
Search patterns
t:word
Match word in the To: header.
c:word
Match word in the Cc: header.
f:word
Match word in the From: header.
s:word
Match word in the Subject: header.
m:word
Match word in the Message-ID: header.
b:word
Match word in the message body.
Message body is taken to mean any body part of type text/plain or text/html. For text/html, text within meta tags is ignored. In particular, the URLs inside <A HREF="..."> tags are not currently indexed. Non-text attachments are ignored. If there's an attachment of type message/rfc822, this is parsed and the match is performed on this sub-message too. If a hit occurs, the enclosing message is treated as having a hit.
d:[start-datespec]-[end-datespec]
Match messages with Date: headers lying in the specific range.
z:[low-size]-[high-size]
Match messages whose size lies in the specified range. If the
low-size argument is omitted it defaults to zero. If the high_size
argument is omitted it defaults to infinite size.
For example, to match messages between 10kbytes and 20kbytes in size, the following search term can be used:
mairix z:10k-20k
The suffix `k' on a number means multiply by 1024, and the suffix `M' on a number means multiply by 1024*1024.
n:word
Match word occurring as the name of an attachment in the message.
Since attachment names are usually long, this option
would usually be used in the substring form. So
mairix n:mairix=
would match all messages which have attachments whose names contain the substring mairix.
The attachment name is determined from the name=xxx or filename=xxx qualifiers on the Content-Type: and Content-Disposition: headers respectively.
F:flags
Match messages with particular flag settings. The available
flags are `s' meaning seen, `r' meaning replied, and `f' meaning
flagged. The flags are case-insensitive. A flag letter may be
prefixed by a `-' to negate its sense. Thus
mairix F:-s d:1w
would match any unread message less than a week old, and
mairix F:f-r d:-1m
would match any flagged message older than a month which you haven't replied to yet.
Note that the flag characters and their meanings agree with those used as the suffix letters on message filenames in maildir folders.
Searching for a match amongst more than one part of a message Multiple body parts may be grouped together, if a match in any of them is sought. Common examples follow.
tc:word
Match word in either the To: or Cc: headers (or both).
bs:word
Match word in either the Subject: header or the message body (or
both).
The a: search pattern is an abbreviation for tcf:; i.e. match the word in the To:, Cc: or From: headers. ("a" stands for "address" in this case.)
Match words
The word argument to the search strings can take various forms.
~word
Match messages not containing the word.
word1,word2
This matches if both the words are matched in the specified message
part.
word1/word2
This matches if either of the words are matched in the specified
message part.
substring=
Match any word containing substring as a substring
substring=N
Match any word containing substring, allowing up to N errors in
the match. For example, if N is 1, a single error is allowed,
where an error can be
Precedence matters
The binding order of the constructions is:
1. Individual command line arguments define separate conditions which are AND-ed together
2. Within a single argument, the letters before the colon define which message parts the expression applies to. If there is no colon, the expression applies to all the headers listed earlier and the body.
3. After the colon, commas delineate separate disjuncts, which are OR-ed together.
4. Each disjunct may contain separate conjuncts, which are separated by plus signs. These conditions are AND-ed together.
5. Each conjunct may start with a tilde to negate it, and may be followed by a slash to indicate a substring match, optionally followed by an integer to define the maximum number of errors allowed.
Date specification
This section describes the syntax used for specifying dates when
searching using the `d:' option.
Dates are specified as a range. The start and end of the range can both be specified. Alternatively, if the start is omitted, it is treated as being the beginning of time. If the end is omitted, it is treated as the current time.
There are 4 basic formats:
d:start-end
Specify both start and end explicitly
d:startSpecify
start, end is the current time
d:-end Specify end, start is `a long time ago' (i.e. early enough to include any message).
d:period
Specify start and end implicitly, as the start and end of the
period given.
The start and end can be specified either absolute or relative. A relative endpoint is given as a number followed by a single letter defining the scaling:
Absolute times can be specified in many forms. Some forms have different meanings when they define a start date from that when they define an end date. Where a single expression specifies both the start and end (i.e. where the argument to d: doesn't contain a `-'), it will usually have different interpretations in the two cases.
In the examples below, suppose the current date is Sunday May 18th, 2003 (when I started to write this material.)
mkdir -p /home/richard/Mail/mfolder touch /home/richard/Mail/mfolder/.mh_sequences
which seems to work. Alternatively, within mutt, you could set MBOX_TYPE to in advance.
If you use Sylpheed, the best way seems to be to create the new folder from within Sylpheed before letting mairix write into it.
Either of the following will match all messages newer than 3 months from me with the word `chrony' in the subject line:
mairix d:3m- f:richard+doesnt+exist s:chrony mairix d:3m- f:richard@doesnt.exist s:chrony
Suppose I don't mind a few spurious matches on the address, I want a wider date range, and I suspect that some messages I replied to might have had the subject keyword spelt wrongly (let's allow up to 2 errors):
mairix d:6m- f:richard s:chrony=2
mairix has special handling for the To:, Cc: and From: headers. Besides the normal word scan, these headers are scanned a second time, where the characters `@', `-' and `.' are also treated as word characters. This allows most (if not all) email addresses to appear in the database as single words. So if you have a mail from wibble@foobar.zzz, it will match on both these searches
mairix f:foobar
mairix f:wibble@foobar.zzz
It should be clear by now that the searching cannot be used to find messages matching general regular expressions. This has never been much of a limitation. Most searches are for particular keywords that were in the messages, or details of the recipients, or the approximate date.
It's also worth pointing out that there is no `locality' information stored, so you can't search for messages that have one words `close' to some other word. For every message and every word, there is a simple yes/no condition stored - whether the message contains the word in a particular header or in the body. So far this has proved to be adequate. mairix has a similar feel to using an Internet search engine.
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