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.TH PICK 1mh "2019-01-06" MH.6.8 [mmh-0.4]
.SH NAME
pick \- select messages by content
scan \- produce a one line per message scan listing
.SH SYNOPSIS
.HP 5
.na
.B pick
.RI [ +folder ]
.RI [ msgs ]
.RB [ \-and
\&...]
.RB [ \-or
\&...]
.RB [ \-not
\&...]
.RB [ \-lbrace
\&...
.BR \-rbrace ]
.RB [ \-\|\-component
.IR pattern ]
.RB [ \-cc
.IR pattern ]
.RB [ \-date
.IR pattern ]
.RB [ \-from
.IR pattern ]
.RB [ \-search
.IR pattern ]
.RB [ \-subject
.IR pattern ]
.RB [ \-to
.IR pattern ]
.RB [ \-after
.IR date ]
.RB [ \-before
.IR date ]
.RB [ \-datefield
.IR field ]
.RB [ \-format
.IR formatfile ]
.RB [ \-width
.IR columns ]
.RB [ \-thread
.RI [ +folder ] messages "|" files ]
.RB [ \-file
.IR mboxfilename ]
.RB [ \-sequence
.I name
\&...]
.RB [ \-public " | " \-nopublic ]
.RB [ \-zero " | " \-nozero ]
.RB [ \-list " | " \-nolist ]
.RB [ \-Version ]
.RB [ \-help ]
.PP
.HP 5
.B scan
is equivalent to
.B pick -format scan.default
.ad
.PP
typical usage:
.PP
.RS 5
.nf
scan\0\-from\0jones`
pick\0\-to\0holloway\0\-sequence\0select
show\0`pick\0\-before\0friday`
.fi
.RE
.ad
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B Pick
searches within a folder for messages with the specified
contents, and then identifies those messages.  Two types of search
primitives are available: pattern matching and date constraint
operations.
.PP
The default
.BR regex (7)
is used to perform the matching, so the
full regular expression facility is available
within
.IR pattern.
With
.BR \-search ,
.I pattern
is used directly, but only for the body of the Mail.
With the others,
.B pick
compares the header field name case insensitive
and the tries to match the field body with the
.IR pattern.
.PP
With
.BR --componend
you can specify the exact header field name you are looking for.
It is used to pick a component which is not one of `To:',
`Cc:', `Date:', `From:', or `Subject:'.
An example is
.RB ` "pick\0\-\|\-reply\-to\0pooh" '.
.PP
Pattern matching is performed on a per\-header-field basis. Within the header
of the message, each field is treated as one long line, but in the
body, each line is separate.  The
.IR pattern
will match any case.
.PP
Note that since the
.B \-date
switch is a pattern matching operation (as
described above), to find messages sent on a certain date the pattern
string must match the text of the `Date:' field of the message.
.PP
Independent of any pattern matching operations requested, the switches
.B \-after
.I date
or
.B \-before
.I date
may also be used to introduce date/time
constraints on all of the messages.  By default, the `Date:'
field is consulted, but if another date yielding field (such as
`BB\-Posted:' or `Delivery\-Date:') should be used, the
.B \-datefield
.I field
switch may be used.
.PP
With
.B \-before
and
.BR \-after ,
.B pick
will actually parse the date
fields in each of the messages specified in `msgs' and compare them
to the date/time specified.  If
.B \-after
is given, then only those
messages whose `Date:' field value is chronologically after the
date specified will be considered.  The
.B \-before
switch specifies the
complimentary action.
.PP
Both the
.B \-after
and
.B \-before
switches take legal 822\-style date
specifications as arguments.
.B Pick
will default certain missing
fields so that the entire date need not be specified.  These fields
are (in order of defaulting): timezone, time and timezone, date, date
and timezone.  All defaults are taken from the current date, time,
and timezone.
.PP
In addition to 822\-style dates,
.B pick
will also recognize any of
the days of the week (`sunday', `monday', and so on),
and the special dates `today', `yesterday' (24 hours
ago), and `tomorrow' (24 hours from now).  All days of the
week are judged to refer to a day in the past (e.g., telling \fIpick\fR
`saturday' on a `tuesday' means `last\ saturday'
not `this\ saturday').
Further more, dates in a simplified ISO 8601/RFC 3339 style (e.g.
`YYYY-MM-DD' or `YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss') are accepted.
Finally, in addition to these special specifications,
.B pick
will
also honor a date specification of the form `\-\fIddd\fR', which means
`\fIddd\fR days ago'.
For example,
.PP
.RS 5
.nf
pick\0\-after\0\-30
.fi
.RE
.PP
identifies the messages of the last thirty days.
.PP
.B Pick
supports complex boolean operations on the searching primitives
with the
.BR \-and ,
.BR \-or ,
.BR \-not ,
and
.B \-lbrace
.B \&...
.B \-rbrace
switches.
For example,
.PP
.RS 5
.nf
pick\0\-after\0yesterday\0\-and
     \-lbrace\0\-from\0freida\0\-or\0\-from\0fear\0\-rbrace
.fi
.RE
.PP
identifies messages recently sent by `frieda' or `fear'.
.PP
The matching primitives take precedence over the
.B \-not
switch, which in turn takes precedence over
.B \-and
which in turn takes precedence
over
.BR \-or .
To override the default precedence, the
.B \-lbrace
and
.B \-rbrace
switches are provided, which act just like opening and closing
parentheses in logical expressions.
.PP
If no search criteria are given, all the messages specified on the
command line are selected (this defaults to `a').
.PP
Once the search has been performed, if the
.B \-list
switch is given, the
message numbers of the selected messages are written to the standard
output separated by newlines.  This is
.B extremely
useful for
quickly generating arguments for other
.B mmh
programs by using the
`backquoting' syntax of the shell.  For example, the command
.PP
.RS 5
show\0`pick\0+todo\0\-after\0`31 Mar 83 0123 PST'`
.RE
.PP
says to
.B show
those messages in the indicated folder which meet the
appropriate criterion.  Note that since
.BR pick 's
context changes
are written out prior to
.BR show 's
invocation, you need not give
the folder argument to
.B show
as well.
.PP
The
.B \-sequence
.I name
switch may be given once for each sequence the user wishes to define.
For each sequence named, that sequence will be defined to mean exactly
those messages selected by
.BR pick .
For example,
.PP
.RS 5
pick\0\-from\0frated\0\-seq\0fred
.RE
.PP
defines a new message sequence for the current folder called
`fred' which contains exactly those messages that were selected.
.PP
By default,
.B pick
will zero the sequence before adding it.  This
action can be disabled with the
.B \-nozero
switch, which means that the
messages selected by
.B pick
will be added to the sequence, if it
already exists, and any messages already a part of that sequence will
remain so.
.PP
The
.B \-public
and
.B \-nopublic
switches are used by
.B pick
in the
same way
.B mark
uses them.

.B Scan
and
.B pick
produces a one\-line\-per\-message listing of the specified and selected
folder or messages.
The default format is for
.B pick
is to print the message number for each message.
The default
.B Scan
line contains the message number
(name), the date, the `From:' field and the `Subject' field.
The following example shows the default output of
.B scan
.PP
.RS 5
.nf
.ta \w'15+- 'u +\w'07/\|05x 'u +\w'Dcrocker  'u
15+     10/\|05 crocker nned
16\-    10/\|05 crocker message id format
18      10/\|06 brien   Re: Exit status from mkdir
19      10/\|07*brien   `scan' listing format in mmh
.fi
.RE
.PP
The `+' on message 15 indicates that it is the current message.
The `\-' on message 16 indicates that it has been replied to, as indicated
by a `Replied:' component (produced by the
.B \-annotate
switch
to the
.B repl
command).
The `*' on message 19 indicates that no `Date:' header was
present.  The time of last modification of the message is given instead.
.B Scan
actually reads each of the specified messages and parses them to extract
the desired fields.  During parsing, appropriate error messages will be
produced if there are format errors in any of the messages.
.PP
By default,
.B scan
will decode RFC-2047 (MIME) encoding in
these scan listings.
.B Scan
will only decode these fields if your
terminal can natively display the character set used in the encoding.
You should set the MM_CHARSET environment variable to your native
character set, if it is not US-ASCII.  See the mh-profile(5) man
page for details about this environment variable.
.PP
The
.B \-file
.I filename
switch allows the user to obtain a
.B scan
listing of a maildrop file as produced by
.BR packf .
This listing
includes every message in the file (you can't scan individual messages).
.PP
The switch
.B \-width
.I columns
may be used to specify the width of
the scan line.  The default is to use the width of the terminal.
.PP
The command:
.PP
.RS 5
(scan | pr ; show a \-showproc pr) | lpr
.RE
.PP
produces a scan listing of the current folder,
followed by a formatted listing of all messages in the folder, one
per page.  Omitting
.RB ` "\-showproc\ pr" '
will cause the messages to be
concatenated, separated by a one\-line header and two blank lines.
.PP
To override the output format used by
.BR scan ,
the
.B \-form
.I file
switch is used.  This permits individual fields of
the scan listing to be extracted with ease.
.I file
is either the name of a format file or a format string directly,
if prepended with an equal sign `='.
See
.BR mh\-format (5)
for the details.
.PP
In addition to the standard
.BR mh\-format (5)
escapes,
.B scan
also recognizes the following additional
.I component
escapes:
.PP
.RS 5
.nf
.ta \w'Dtimenow  'u +\w'Returns  'u
.I "Escape      Returns Description
dtimenow        date    the current date
folder  string  the name of the current folder
.fi
.RE
.PP
If no date header is present in the message, the
.I function
escapes
which operate on
.RB { date }
will return values for the date of last
modification of the message file itself.  This feature is handy for
scanning a draft folder, as message drafts usually aren't allowed
to have dates in them.
.PP
.B scan
will update the
.B mmh
context prior to starting the listing,
so interrupting a long
.B scan
listing preserves the new context.
.B nmh
purists hate this idea.

.SH FILES
.fc ^ ~
.nf
.ta \w'/etc/mmh/ExtraBigFileName  'u
^$HOME/.mmh/profile~^The user profile
.fi

.SH "PROFILE COMPONENTS"
.fc ^ ~
.nf
.ta 2.4i
.ta \w'ExtraBigProfileName  'u
^Path:~^To determine the user's mail storage
^Alternate\-Mailboxes:~^To determine the user's mailboxes
^Current\-Folder:~^To find the default current folder
.fi

.SH "SEE ALSO"
mark(1)

.SH DEFAULTS
.nf
.RB ` +folder "' defaults to the current folder"
.RB ` msgs "' defaults to all messages"
.RB ` "\-datefield date" '
.RB ` \-zero '
.RB ` \-list "' is the default if no `\-sequence', `\-nolist' otherwise"
.RB ` "\-format pick\.default" "' if the program is called with scan `scan.default' is used
.fi

.SH CONTEXT
If a folder is given, it will become the current folder.

.SH HISTORY
In previous versions of
.BR MH ,
the
.B pick
command would
.BR show ,
.BR scan ,
or
.B refile
the selected messages.  This was rather
`inverted logic' from the UNIX point of view, so
.B pick
was changed to define sequences and output those sequences.  Hence,
.B pick
can be used to generate the arguments for all other
.B MH
commands, instead of giving
.B pick
endless switches for invoking those commands
itself.
.PP
Also, previous versions of
.B pick
balked if you didn't specify
a search string or a date/time constraint.  The current version does
not, and merely matches the messages you specify.  This lets you type
something like:
.PP
.RS 5
show\0`pick\0l:20\0\-seq\0fear`
.RE
.PP
instead of typing
.PP
.RS 5
.nf
mark\0\-add\0\-nozero\0\-seq\0fear\0l:20
show\0fear
.fi
.RE
.PP
Also, timezones used to be ignored when comparing dates: they aren't
any more.
.PP
In
.B MH
,
.B nmh
and old
.B mmh
versions scan and pick where two different tools. So instand of typing
.PP
.RS 5
.nf
scan\0\-from\0philipp
.fi
.RE
.PP
you had typed
.PP
.RS 5
.nf
scan\0`pick\0\-from\0philipp`
.fi
.RE
.PP
With the default config the old style usage is still supported, so
you can write scripts for both mmh and nmh.
.SH "HELPFUL HINTS"
Use
.RB ` "pick sequence \-list" '
to enumerate the messages in a sequence
(such as for use by a shell script).

.SH BUGS
Any occurrence of
.B \-datefield
must occur prior to the
.B \-after
or
.B \-before
switch it applies to.
.PP
If
.B pick
is used in a back\-quoted operation, such as
.PP
.RS 5
scan\0`pick\0\-from\0jones`
.RE
.PP
and
.B pick
selects no messages (e.g., no messages are from
`jones'), then the shell will still run the outer command (e.g.,
.BR scan ).
Since no messages were matched,
.B pick
produced
no output, and the argument given to the outer command as a result of
backquoting
.B pick
is empty.  In the case of
.B mmh
programs,
the outer command now acts as if the default `msg' or `msgs' should be
used (e.g., `all' in the case of
.BR scan ).
To prevent this
unexpected behavior, if
.B \-list
was given, and if its standard output is not a tty, then
.B pick
outputs the illegal message number `0'
when it fails.  This lets the outer command fail gracefully as well.
.PP
To account for this case when combining
.B pick
with regular shell tools, filter out the message number `0'.
For example, do
.PP
.RS 5
pick\0...\0|\0fgrep\0-vx\0\&0\0|\0wc\0-l
.RE
.PP
to count the number of messages picked.
.PP
The pattern syntax `[l-r]' is not supported; each letter to be
matched must be included within the square brackets.