mirror of https://github.com/djcb/mu.git
149 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
149 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
---
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layout: default
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permalink: code/mu/cheatsheet.html
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---
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# Mu Cheatsheet
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Here are some tips for using `mu`. If you want to know more, please
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refer to the `mu` man pages. For a quick warm-up, there's also the
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`mu-easy` man-page.
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## Indexing your mail
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``` $ mu index```
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If `mu` did not guess the right Maildir, you can set it explicitly:
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``` $ mu index --maildir=~/MyMaildir```
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### Excluding directories from indexing
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If you want to exclude certain directories from being indexed (for example,
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directories with spam-messages), put a file called `.noindex` in the directory
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to exclude, and it will be ignored when indexing (including its children)
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## Finding messages
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After you have indexed your messages, you can search them. Here are some
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examples. Also note the `--threads` argument to get a threaded display of
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the messages, and `--color` to get colors (both since 0.9.7).
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### messages about Helsinki (in message body, subject, sender, ...)
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``` $ mu find Helsinki```
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### messages to Jack with subject jellyfish containing the word tumbleweed
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``` $ mu find to:Jack subject:jellyfish tumbleweed```
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### messages between 2 kilobytes and a 2Mb, written in December 2009 with an attachment from Bill
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``` $ mu find size:2k..2m date:20091201..20093112 flag:attach from:bill```
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### signed messages about apples *OR* oranges
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``` $ mu find flag:signed apples OR oranges```
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### messages about yoghurt in the Sent Items folder (note the quoting):
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``` $ mu find maildir:'/Sent Items' yoghurt```
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### unread messages about things starting with 'soc' (soccer, society, socrates, ...)
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``` $ mu find 'subject:soc*' flag:unread```
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Note, the '*' only works at the /end/ of a search term, and you need to
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quote it or the shell will interpret it before `mu` sees it.
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(searching using the '*' wildcard is available since mu 0.9.6)
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### finding messages with images as attachment
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``` $ mu find 'mime:image/*' ```
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(since mu version 0.9.8)
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### finding messages with 'milk' in one of its text parts (such as text-based attachments):
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``` $ mu find embed:milk ```
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(since mu version 0.9.8)
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### finding /all/ your messages
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``` $ mu find ""```
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(since mu version 0.9.7)
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## Finding contacts
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Contacts (names + email addresses) are cached separately, and can be
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searched with `mu cfind` (after your messages have been indexed):
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### all contacts with 'john' in either name or e-mail address
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``` $ mu cfind john```
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`mu cfind` takes a regular expression for matching.
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You can export the contact information to a number of formats for use
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in e-mail clients. For example:
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### export /all/ your contacts to the `mutt` addressbook format
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``` $ mu cfind --format=mutt-alias```
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Other formats are: `plain`, `mutt-ab`, `wl` (Wanderlust), `org-contact`,
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`bbdb` and `csv` (comma-separated values).
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## Retrieving attachments from messages
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You can retrieve attachments from messages using `mu extract`, which takes a
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message file as an argument. Without any other arguments, it displays the
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MIME-parts of the message. You can then get specific attachments:
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``` $ mu extract --parts=3,4 my-msg-file```
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will get you parts 3 and 4. You can also extract files based on their name:
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``` $ mu extract my-msg-file '.*\.jpg'```
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The second argument is a case-insensitive regular expression, and the command
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will extract any files matching the pattern -- in the example, all
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`.jpg`-files.
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Do not confuse the '.*' /regular expression/ in `mu extract` (and `mu
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cfind`) with the '*' /wildcard/ in `mu find`.
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## Getting more colorful output
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Some of the `mu` commands, such as `mu find`, `mu cfind` and `mu view`
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support colorized output. By default this is turned off, but you can enable
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it with `--color`, or setting the `MU_COLORS` environment variable to
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non-empty.
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``` $ mu find --color capibara```
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(since `mu` version 0.9.6)
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## Integration with mail clients
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The `mu-find` man page contains examples for `mutt` and `wanderlust`. And
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since version 0.9.8, `mu` includes its own e-mail client for `emacs`, `mu4e`.
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## Viewing specific messages
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You can view message contents with `mu view`; it does not use the database
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and simply takes a message file as it's argument:
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``` $ mu view ~/Maildir/inbox/cur/message24```
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You can also use `--color` to get colorized output, and `--summary` to get a
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summary of the message contents instead of the whole thing.
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## Further processing of matched messages
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If you need to process the results of your queries with some other program,
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you can return the results as a list of absolute paths to the messages found:
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For example, to get the number of lines in all your messages mentioning
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/banana/, you could use something like:
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``` $ mu find --exec='wc -l'```
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Note that we use 'l', so the returned message paths will be quoted. This is
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useful if you have maildirs with spaces in their names.
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For further processing, also the ~--format`(xml|sexp)~ can be useful. For
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example,
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``` $ mu find --format=xml pancake```
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will give you a list of pancake-related messages in XML-format.
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