#+TITLE: MU FIND #+MAN_CLASS_OPTIONS: :section-id "@SECTION_ID@" :date "@MAN_DATE@" * NAME mu-find - find e-mail messages in the *mu* database. * SYNOPSIS *mu [common-options] find [options] * * DESCRIPTION *mu find* is the *mu* command for searching e-mail message that were stored earlier using *mu index(1)*. * SEARCHING MAIL *mu find* starts a search for messages in the database that match some search pattern. The search patterns are described in detail in *mu-query(7)*. For example: #+begin_example $ mu find subject:snow and date:2009.. #+end_example would find all messages in 2009 with `snow' in the subject field, e.g: #+begin_example 2009-03-05 17:57:33 EET Lucia running in the snow 2009-03-05 18:38:24 EET Marius Re: running in the snow #+end_example Note, this the default, plain-text output, which is the default, so you don't have to use *--format=plain*. For other types of output (such as symlinks, XML or s-expressions), see the discussion in the *OPTIONS*-section below about *--format*. The search pattern is taken as a command-line parameter. If the search parameter consists of multiple parts (as in the example) they are treated as if there were a logical *and* between them. For details on the possible queries, see *mu-query(7)*. * FIND OPTIONS Note, some of the important options are described in the *mu*(1) man-page and not here, as they apply to multiple mu-commands. The *find*-command has various options that influence the way *mu* displays the results. If you don't specify anything, the defaults are ~fields="d f s"~, ~--sortfield=date~ and ~--reverse~. ** -f, --fields= specifies a string that determines which fields are shown in the output. This string consists of a number of characters (such as 's' for subject or 'f' for from), which will replace with the actual field in the output. Fields that are not known will be output as-is, allowing for some simple formatting. For example: #+begin_example $ mu find subject:snow --fields "d f s" #+end_example lists the date, subject and sender of all messages with `snow' in the their subject. The table of replacement characters is superset of the list mentions for search parameters, such as: #+begin_example t *t*o: recipient d Sent *d*ate of the message f Message sender (*f*rom:) g Message flags (fla*g*s) l Full path to the message (*l*ocation) s Message *s*ubject i Message-*i*d m *m*aildir #+end_example For the complete list, try the command: ~mu info fields~. The message flags are described in *mu-query(7)*. As an example, a message which is `seen', has an attachment and is signed would have `asz' as its corresponding output string, while an encrypted new message would have `nx'. ** -s, --sortfield= and -z,--reverse specify the field to sort the search results by and the direction (i.e., `reverse' means that the sort should be reverted - Z-A). Examples include: #+begin_example cc,c Cc (carbon-copy) recipient(s) date,d Message sent date from,f Message sender maildir,m Maildir msgid,i Message id prio,p Nessage priority subject,s Message subject to,t To:-recipient(s) #+end_example For the complete list, try the command: ~mu info fields~. Thus, for example, to sort messages by date, you could specify: #+begin_example $ mu find fahrrad --fields "d f s" --sortfield=date --reverse #+end_example Note, if you specify a sortfield, by default, messages are sorted in reverse (descending) order (e.g., from lowest to highest). This is usually a good choice, but for dates it may be more useful to sort in the opposite direction. ** -n, --maxnum= If > 0, display maximally that number of entries. If not specified, all matching entries are displayed. ** --summary-len= If > 0, use that number of lines of the message to provide a summary. ** --format= output results in the specified format: - The default is *plain*, i.e normal output with one line per message. - *links* outputs the results as a maildir with symbolic links to the found messages. This enables easy integration with mail-clients (see below for more information). - *xml* formats the search results as XML. - *sexp* formats the search results as an s-expression as used in Lisp programming environments ** --linksdir= and -c, --clearlinks when using ~-format=links~, output the results as a maildir with symbolic links to the found messages. This enables easy integration with mail-clients (see below for more information). *mu* will create the maildir if it does not exist yet. If you specify ~--clearlinks~, existing symlinks will be cleared from the target directories; this allows for re-use of the same maildir. However, this option will delete any symlink it finds, so be careful. #+begin_example $ mu find grolsch --format=links --linksdir=~/Maildir/search --clearlinks #+end_example stores links to found messages in =~/Maildir/search=. If the directory does not exist yet, it will be created. Note: when *mu* creates a Maildir for these links, it automatically inserts a =.noindex= file, to exclude the directory from *mu index*. ** --after= only show messages whose message files were last modified (*mtime*) after ==. == is a UNIX *time_t* value, the number of seconds since 1970-01-01 (in UTC). From the command line, you can use the *date* command to get this value. For example, only consider messages modified (or created) in the last 5 minutes, you could specify #+begin_example --after=`date +%s --date='5 min ago'` #+end_example This is assuming the GNU *date* command. ** --exec= the ~--exec~ coption causes the =command= to be executed on each matched message; for example, to see the raw text of all messages matching `milkshake', you could use: #+begin_example $ mu find milkshake --exec='less' #+end_example which is roughly equivalent to: #+begin_example $ mu find milkshake --fields="l" | xargs less #+end_example ** -b, --bookmark= use a bookmarked search query. Using this option, a query from your bookmark file will be prepended to other search queries. See *mu-bookmarks(5)* for the details of the bookmarks file. ** -u, --skip-dups whenever there are multiple messages with the same message-id field, only show the first one. This is useful if you have copies of the same message, which is a common occurrence when using e.g. Gmail together with *offlineimap*. ** -r, --include-related include messages being referred to by the matched messages -- i.e.. include messages that are part of the same message thread as some matched messages. This is useful if you want Gmail-style `conversations'. ** -t, --threads show messages in a `threaded' format -- that is, with indentation and arrows showing the conversation threads in the list of matching messages. When using this, sorting is chronological (by date), based on the newest message in a thread. Messages in the threaded list are indented based on the depth in the discussion, and are prefix with a kind of arrow with thread-related information about the message, as in the following table: #+begin_example | | normal | orphan | duplicate | |-------------+--------+--------+-----------| | first child | `-> | `*> | `=> | | other | |-> | |*> | |=> | #+end_example Here, an `orphan' is a message without a parent message (in the list of matches), and a duplicate is a message whose message-id was already seen before; not this may not really be the same message, if the message-id was copied. The algorithm used for determining the threads is based on Jamie Zawinksi's description: http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html ** -a,--analyze instead of executing the query, analyze it by show the parse-tree s-expression and a stringified version of the Xapian query. This can help users to determine how ~mu~ interprets some query. The output of this command are differ between versions, but should be helpful nevertheless. #+include: "muhome.inc" :minlevel 2 #+include: "common-options.inc" :minlevel 1 * INTEGRATION It is possible to integrate *mu find* with some mail clients ** *mutt* For *mutt* you can use the following in your =muttrc=; pressing the F8 key will start a search, and F9 will take you to the results. #+begin_example # mutt macros for mu macro index "mu find --clearlinks --format=links --linksdir=~/Maildir/search " \\ "mu find" macro index "~/Maildir/search" \\ "mu find results" #+end_example ** *Wanderlust* *Sam B* suggested the following on the *mu*-mailing list. First add the following to your Wanderlust configuration file: #+begin_example (require 'elmo-search) (elmo-search-register-engine 'mu 'local-file :prog "/usr/local/bin/mu" ;; or wherever you've installed it :args '("find" pattern "--fields" "l") :charset 'utf-8) (setq elmo-search-default-engine 'mu) ;; for when you type "g" in folder or summary. (setq wl-default-spec "[") #+end_example Now, you can search using the *g* key binding; you can also create permanent virtual folders when the messages matching some expression by adding something like the following to your =folders= file. #+begin_example VFolders { [date:today..now]!mu "Today" [size:1m..100m]!mu "Big" [flag:unread]!mu "Unread" } #+end_example After restarting Wanderlust, the virtual folders should appear. * ENCODING *mu find* output is encoded according to the locale for =--format=plain= (the default format), and UTF-8 for all other formats (=sexp=, =xml=). * PERFORMANCE Some notes on performance, comparing the timings between some recent releases; taking the total number for 10 test runs. 1. time (repeat 10 mu find "" -n 50000 > /dev/null) 2. time (repeat 10 mu find "" -n 50000 --include-related --threads > /dev/null) #+ATTR_MAN: :disable-caption t | release | time 1 (sec) | time 2 (sec) | |---------------+--------------+--------------| | 1.4 | 8.9s | 59.3s | | 1.6 | 8.3s | 27.5s | | 1.8 | 8.7s | 29.3s | | 1.10 | 9.8s | 30.6s | | 1.11 (master) | 10.1s | 29.5s | #+include: "exit-code.inc" :minlevel 1 #+include: "bugs.inc" :minlevel 1 #+include: "author.inc" :minlevel 1 #+include: "copyright.inc" :minlevel 1 * SEE ALSO *mu(1)*, *mu-index(1)*, *mu-query(7)*, *mu-info(1)*