1 .TH "MYMAIL" "0.9.5" "February 2013" "Francois Fleuret" "User Commands"
3 \" This man page was written by Francois Fleuret <francois@fleuret.org>
4 \" and is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
9 mymail \- A simple command line utility for indexing and searching mbox files
13 \fBmymail\fP [\fIoptions\fR] [\fI<mbox dir1>\fR [\fI<mbox dir2>\fR ... ]|\fI<db file1>\fR [\fI<db file2>\fR ... ]]
17 \fBmymail\fP is a command line utility to index mbox files, search for
18 mails based on sender, subject, etc. and generate result mbox files.
20 It is similar in spirit to other tools such as mu or notmuch, but is
25 \fB-h\fR, \fB--help\fR
28 \fB-v\fR, \fB--version\fR
29 print the version number
31 \fB-q\fR, \fB--quiet\fR
32 do not write information during the search
34 \fB-p <db filename pattern>\fR, \fB--db-pattern <db filename pattern>\fR
35 set the db filename pattern for recursive search
37 \fB-r <db root path>\fR, \fB--db-root <db root path>\fR
38 set the db root path for recursive search
40 \fB-l <db filename list>\fR, \fB--db-list <db filename list>\fR
41 set the semicolon-separated list of db files for search
43 \fB-m <mbox filename pattern>\fR, \fB--mbox-pattern <mbox filename pattern>\fR
44 set the mbox filename pattern for recursive search
46 \fB-s <search pattern>\fR, \fB--search <search pattern>\fR search for
47 matching mails in the db file. Multiple search requests can be
48 combined, and only mails fulfilling all of them will be extracted.
50 \fB-d <db filename>\fR, \fB--db-file-generate <db filename>\fR
51 set the db filename for indexing
53 \fB-i\fR, \fB--index\fR
54 index mails in the mailboxes located recursively anywhere in the
55 directories following the options on the command lines
57 \fB-o <output filename>\fR, \fB--output <output filename>\fR set the
58 result mbox filename. If it is not set, the standard output is used
60 \fB-a <search key>\fR, \fB--default-search <search key>\fR
61 set the default search key. If a search request is not understood,
62 it is interpreted as the regexp with this default search key
64 .SH "ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES"
67 \fBMYMAIL_DB_PATTERN\fR
68 defaut value for the --db-pattern argument
71 defaut value for the --db-root argument
74 defaut value for the --db-list argument
77 defaut value for the --db-file argument
81 The search conditions take the form of a key which is a single letter,
82 followed by a space and a regexp, which can itself contain spaces. If
83 the condition is prefaced by the character "!" it is negated, and has
84 to be false for a mail to be selected.
86 The time-based conditions use as reference the time indicated in the
87 heading From line, and not in the Date: field.
90 \fBf <regexp>\fR (from)
91 selects mails whose leading line From, or fields From:, Sender:,
92 Reply-To:, or Return-Path: matches the regexp.
95 selects mails whose field To:, Cc:, or Bcc: matches the regexp.
97 \fBp <regexp>\fR (participant)
98 selects mails that would be selected by \fBf\fR or \fBt\fR.
100 \fBs <regexp>\fR (subject)
101 selects mails whose field Subject: matches the regexp.
103 \fBd <regexp>\fR (date)
104 selects mails whose field Date: matches the regexp.
106 \fBb <regexp>\fR (body)
107 selects mails whose body matches the regexp. Evaluating such a
108 condition requires to read the original mboxes completely, which can
109 be slow. However, header conditions are checked first to read the
110 bodies only for mails which fulfill them entirely.
112 \fB8h\fR, \fBtoday\fR, \fB24h\fR, \fB48h\fR, \fBweek\fR, \fBmonth\fR, and
114 selects mails received during the last 8, 24, 24, 48, 7 * 24 hours, 31 *
115 24 hours, and 365 * 24 hours respectively.
118 selects mails received between 48h and 24h ago.
120 \fBmonday\fR, \fBtuesday\fR, ..., \fBsunday\fR
121 selects mails received the most recent such day of the week.
129 .B mymail --db-file /tmp/mymail/2010-2011/mymail.db \e
130 .B \ \ \ \ \ \ \ --index \e
131 .B \ \ \ \ \ \ \ ~/archives/mails/2010 ~/archives/mails/2011
134 will index all the mbox files present in the directories
135 ~/archives/mails/2010 and ~/archives/mails/2011 (recursively) and
136 create an index file /tmp/mymail/2010-2011/mymail.db
142 .B mymail --db-pattern '\.db$' --db-root /tmp/mymail \e
143 .B \ \ \ \ \ \ \ --output /tmp/mymail.mbox \e
144 .B \ \ \ \ \ \ \ --search 'p bob.something' \e
145 .B \ \ \ \ \ \ \ --search '!s spam' \e
146 .B \ \ \ \ \ \ \ --search 'month'
149 will search in all the database files *.db located (recursively) in
150 /tmp/mymail, for all the mails having "bob.something" as sender or
151 recipient, without "spam" in the subject, received over the last 31
152 days, and create an mbox file /tmp/mymail/mbox.
156 The search in the mail bodies does not decode mimencoding mails, hence
157 will not catch patterns in encoded text.
159 The mbox format is not clear for multipart messages, since the ^"From
160 " lines are not always quoted properly (at least the ones I use for
165 Written by Francois Fleuret <francois@fleuret.org> and distributed
166 under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 as
167 published by the Free Software Foundation. This is free software: you
168 are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the
169 extent permitted by law.