NAME¶

mu_find - find e-mail messages in the mu database.

SYNOPSIS¶

mu find [options] <search expression>

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. For example:

   $ mu find subject:snow from:john

would find all messages from John with 'snow' in the subject field, something like:

  2009-03-05 17:57:33 EET Lucia  <lucia@example.com> running in the snow
  2009-03-05 18:38:24 EET Marius <marius@foobar.com> Re: running in the snow

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. If you want to make your own constructions (using AND, OR, NOT etc., you have to put quotes around them so mu can consider them as a unit; for example to find mails with oranges OR mandarins in the subject-field, you can use:

  $ mu find 'subject:orange OR subject:mandarin'

mu relies on the Xapian database for its searching capabilities, so it offers all the search functionality that Xapian offers; for all the details, see:
http://xapian.org/docs/queryparser.html One special feature of mu is that is does not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase, nor the accented or unaccented versions of characters. All match. In general, mu tries to be 'eager' in matching, as filtering out unwanted results is usually preferrable over non matching messages. A wildcard search is a search where a * matches the last n character(s) in some string. The string must always start with one or more characters before the wildcards. Since version 0.9.6, mu also supports wildcard searches for all fields except maildirs and paths. So, to get all mails with a subject containing a word starting with com, you can use:

  $ mu find 'subject:com*'

and get mails about computers, comments, compilation and so on. Note, when running from the command-line it's import to put the query in quotes, otherwise the shell would interpret the '*'. It is important to remember that the '*' invokes the wildcard search only when used as the rightmost character of a search term. Furthermore, it is not a regular expression. In older versions of mu, queries were logged in <mu-home>/mu.log; however, since version 0.9, mu no longer does this. The basic way to search a message is to type some words matching it, as you would do in an internet search engine. For example,

  $ mu find monkey banana

will find all messages that contain both 'monkey' and 'banana' in either body or subject or one of the address-fields (to/from/cc). As mentioned, matching is case-insensitive and accent-insensitive; thus

  $ mu find Mönkey BÄNAÑå

yields the same results as the example above. mu also recognizes prefixes for specific fields in a messages; for example:

  $ mu find subject:penguin

to find messages with have the word penguin in the subject field. You can abbreviate subject: to just s:. Here is the full table of the search fields and their abbreviations:

	cc,c            Cc (carbon-copy) recipient(s)
	bcc,h           Bcc (blind-carbon-copy) recipient(s)
	from,f          Message sender
	subject,s       Message subject
	to,t            To: recipient(s)
	maildir,m       Maildir
	msgid,i         Message-ID
	prio,p          Message priority ('low', 'normal' or 'high')
	flag,g          Message Flags
	date,d          Date-Range
	size,z          Message size
	embed,e         Search inside embedded text parts (messages, attachments)
	file,j          Attachment filename
	mime,y          MIME-type of one or more message parts
	tag,x           Tag for the message (contents of the  X-Label field)

For clarity, this man-page uses the longer versions. The meaning of most of these fields should be clear, but some require some extra discusion. First, the message flags field describes certain properties of the message, as listed in the following table:

	d,draft         Draft Message
	f,flagged       Flagged
	n,new           New message (in new/ Maildir)
	p,passed        Passed ('Handled')
	r,replied       Replied
	s,seen          Seen
	t,thrashed      Marked for deletion
	a,attach        Has attachment
	z,signed        Signed message
	x,encrypted     Encrypted message

Using this, we can search e.g. for all signed messages that have an attachment:

  $ mu find flag:signed flag:attach

The message-priority has three possible values: low, normal or high. We can match them using prio: - for example, to get all high-priority messages with a subject containing some bird:

  $ mu find prio:high subject:nightingale

The Maildir field describes the directory path starting after the Maildir-base path, and before the /cur/ or /new/ part. So for example, if there's a message with the file name ~/Maildir/lists/running/cur/1234.213:2,, you could find it (and all the other messages in the same maildir) with:

  $ mu find maildir:/lists/running

Note the starting '/'. If you want to match mails in the 'root' maildir, you can do with a single '/':

  $ mu find maildir:/

(and of course you can use the m: shortcut instead of maildir:) The date: (or d:) search parameter is 'special' in the fact that it takes a range of dates. For now, these dates are in ISO 8601 format (YYYYMMDDHHMM); you can leave out the right part, and mu will add the rest, depending on whether this is the beginning or end of the date interval. For example, for the beginning of the interval "201012" would be interpreted as "20101201010000", or December 1, 2010 at 00:00, while for the end of the interval, this would be interpreted as "20101231122359", or December 31, 2010 at 23:59. To get all messages between (inclusive) the 5th of May 2009 and the 2nd of June 2010, you could use:

  $ mu find date:20090505..20100602

Non-numeric characters are ignored, so the following is equivalent but more readable:

  $ mu find date:2009-05-05..2010-06-02

Precision is up to the minute and 24-hour notation for times is used, so another example would be:

  $ mu find date:2009-05-05/12:23..2010-06-02/17:18

mu also understand relative dates, in the form of a posiive number followed by h (hour), d (day), w (week), m (30 days) or y (365 days). Some examples to explain this:

	5h      five hours in the past
	2w      two weeks in the past
	3m      three times 30 days in the past
	1y      365 days in the past

Using this notation, you can for example match messages between two and three weeks old:

  $ mu find date:3w..2w

There are some special keywords for dates, namely 'now', meaning the prsent moment and 'today' for the beginning of today. So to get all messages sent or received today, you could use:

  $ mu find date:today..now

The size or z allows you to match size ranges -- that is, match messages that have a byte-size within a certain range. Units (B (for bytes), K (for 1000 bytes) and M (for 1000 * 1000 bytes) are supported). For example, to get all messages between 10Kb and 2Mb (assuming SI units), you could use:

  $ mu find size:10K..2M

Finally, you can match all messages using "":

  $ mu 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=<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:

 

  $ mu find subject:snow --fields "d f s"
    

 

would list 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; the complete list:

 

	t	 to: recipient
	c	 cc: (carbon-copy) recipient
	h	Bcc: (blind carbon-copy,  hidden) recipient
	d	Sent  date of the message
	f	Message sender ( from:)
	g	Message flags (fla gs)
	l	Full path to the message ( location)
	p	Message  priority (high, normal, low)
	s	Message  subject
	i	Message- id
	m	 maildir
    

 

 

The message flags are the same ones we already saw in the message flags above. Thus, 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 =<field> and -z,

--reverse specifies the field to sort the search results by, and the direction (i.e., 'reverse' means that the sort should be reverted - Z-A). The following fields are supported:

 

	cc,c            Cc (carbon-copy) recipient(s)
	bcc,h           Bcc (blind-carbon-copy) recipient(s)
	date,d          message sent date
	from,f          message sender
	maildir,m       maildir
	msgid,i         message id
	prio,p          message priority
	subject,s       message subject
	to,t            To:-recipient(s)
    

 

Thus, for example, to sort messages by date, you could specify:

 

  $ mu find fahrrad --fields "d f s" --sortfield=date --reverse
    

 

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.

 

--summary

output a summary based upon the first lines of the message.

 

--summary-len=<number>

Number of lines to use for the summary. Default: 5.

 

--include-unreadable

normally, mu find does not include messages that are unreadable, typically do not have corresponding disk file, i.e., messages that live only in the databases. With this option even such messages are included. Note, for --format=links, unreadable message are ignore even when this option is set.

 

--format=plain|links|xquery|xml|sexp

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). See --linksdir and --clearlinks below.

 

xml formats the search results as XML.

 

sexp formats the search results as an s-expression as used in Lisp programming environments.

 

xquery shows the Xapian query corresponding to your search terms. This is meant for for debugging purposes.

 

--linksdir =<dir> and -c, --clearlinks

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, all existing symlinks will be cleared from the target maildir; this allows for re-use of the same directory. An alternative would be to delete the target directory before, but this has a big chance of accidentaly removing something that should not be removed.

 

  $ mu find grolsch --linksdir=~/Maildir/search --clearlinks
    

 

will store 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.

 

--exec=<command>

the --exec command 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:

  $ mu find milkshake --exec='less'
    

which is roughly equivalent to:

  $ mu find milkshake --fields="l" | xargs less
    

 

 

-b, --bookmark=<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(1) for the details of the bookmarks file.

 

-t, --threads

show messages in 'threaded' format -- that is, with indentation and arrows showing the conversation threads in the list of matching messages.

 

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:

 

|             | normal | orphan | duplicate |
|-------------+--------+--------+-----------|
| first child | `->    | `*>    | `=>       |
| other       | |->    | |*>    | |=>       |
    

 

Here, the 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.

 

The algorithm used for determining the threads is based on Jamie Zawinksy's description: http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html

 

Example queries¶

Here are some simple examples of mu search queries; you can make many more complicated queries using various logical operators, parentheses and so on, but in the author's experience, it's usually faster to find a message with a simple query just searching for some words. Find all messages with both 'bee' and 'bird' (in any field)

  $ mu find 'bee AND bird'

or shorter, because AND is implied:

  $ mu find bee bird

Find all messages with either Frodo or Sam:

  $ mu find 'Frodo OR Sam'

Find all messages with the 'wombat' as subject, and 'capibara' anywhere:

  $ mu find subject:wombat capibara

Find all messages in the 'Archive' folder from Fred:

  $ mu find from:fred maildir:/Archive

Find all unread messages with attachments:

  $ mu find flag:attach flag:unread

Find all messages with PDF-attachments:

  $ mu find mime:application/pdf

Find all messages with attached images:

  $ mu find 'mime:image/*'

Note[1]: the argument needs to be quoted, or the shell will interpret the '*' Note[2]: the '*' wild card can only be used as the last (rightmost) part of a search term.

Integrating mu find with 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.

 

# mutt macros for mu
macro index <F8> "<shell-escape>mu find --clearlinks --format=links --linksdir=~/Maildir/search " \
					"mu find"
macro index <F9> "<change-folder-readonly>~/Maildir/search" \
					"mu find results"
    

 

 

 

Wanderlust

 

Sam B suggested the following on the mu-mailing list. First add the following to your Wanderlust configuraiton file:

 

(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 "[")
    

 

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.

 

VFolders {
  [date:today..now]!mu  "Today"

  [size:1m..100m]!mu    "Big"

  [flag:unread]!mu      "Unread"
}
    

 

After restarting Wanderlust, the virtual folders should appear.

 

 

Wanderlust (old)

 

Another way to intergrate mu and wanderlust is shown below; the aforementioned method is recommended, but if that does not work for some reason, the below can be an alternative.

 

(defvar mu-wl-mu-program     "/usr/local/bin/mu")
(defvar mu-wl-search-folder  "search")

(defun mu-wl-search ()
  "search for messages with `mu', and jump to the results"
   (let* ((muexpr (read-string "Find messages matching: "))
	  (sfldr  (concat elmo-maildir-folder-path "/"
		    mu-wl-search-folder))
	  (cmdline (concat mu-wl-mu-program " find "
		      "--clearlinks --format=links --linksdir='" sfldr "' "
		     muexpr))
	  (rv (shell-command cmdline)))
    (cond
      ((= rv 0)  (message "Query succeeded"))
      ((= rv 2)  (message "No matches found"))
      (t (message "Error running query")))
  (= rv 0)))

(defun mu-wl-search-and-goto ()
  "search and jump to the folder with the results"
  (interactive)
  (when (mu-wl-search)
    (wl-summary-goto-folder-subr
      (concat "." mu-wl-search-folder)
      'force-update nil nil t)
    (wl-summary-sort-by-date)))

;; querying both in summary and folder
(define-key wl-summary-mode-map (kbd "Q") ;; => query
  '(lambda()(interactive)(mu-wl-search-and-goto)))
(define-key wl-folder-mode-map (kbd "Q") ;; => query
  '(lambda()(interactive)(mu-wl-search-and-goto)))

    

 

 

RETURN VALUE¶

mu find returns 0 upon successful completion; if the search was performed, there needs to be a least one match. Anything else leads to a non-zero return value, for example:

| code | meaning                        |
|------+--------------------------------|
|    0 | ok                             |
|    1 | general error                  |
|    2 | no matches (for 'mu find')     |
|    4 | database is corrupted          |

ENCODING¶

mu find output is encoded according the locale for --format=plain (the default), and UTF-8 for all other formats ( sexp, xml).

BUGS¶

Please report bugs if you find them: http://code.google.com/p/mu0/issues/list If you have specific messages which are not matched correctly, please attach them (appropriately censored of course).

AUTHOR¶

Dirk-Jan C. Binnema <djcb@djcbsoftware.nl>

SEE ALSO¶

mu(1) mu-index(1)