mairix
indexes and searches a collection of email messages. The folders containing
the messages for indexing are defined in the configuration file. The indexing
stage produces a database file. The database file provides rapid access to
details of the indexed messages during searching operations. A search normally
produces a folder (so-called
mfolder)
containing the matched messages. However, a raw mode
(-r)
exists which just lists the matched messages instead.
It can operate with the following folder types
*
maildir
*
MH (compatible with the MH folder formats used by xmh, sylpheed, claws-mail, nnml (Gnus) and evolution)
*
mbox (including mboxes that have been compressed with gzip or bzip2)
If maildir or MH source folders are used, and a search outputs its matches to
an mfolder in maildir or MH format, symbolic links are used to reference the
original messages inside the mfolder. However, if mbox folders are involved,
copies of messages are made instead.
OPTIONS
mairix
decides whether indexing or searching is required by looking for the presence of any
search-patterns
on the command line.
Special modes
-h, --help
Show usage summary and exit
-V, --version
Show program version and exit
-d
Dump the database's contents in human-readable form to stdout.
General options
-f mairixrc
--rcfile mairixrc
Specify an alternative configuration file to use. The default configuration file is
~/.mairixrc.
-v, --verbose
Make the output more verbose
-Q, --no-integrity-checks
Normally
mairix
will do some internal integrity tests on the database. The
-Q
option removes these checks, making
mairix
run faster, but it will be less likely to detect internal problems if any bugs creep in.
The
nochecks
directive in the rc file has the same effect.
--unlock
mairix
locks its database file during any indexing or searching operation to prevent
multiple indexing runs interfering with each other, or an indexing run
interfering with search runs. The
--unlock
option removes the lockfile before doing the requested indexing or searching
operation. This is a convenient way of cleaning up a stale lockfile if an
earlier run crashed for some reason or was aborted.
Indexing options
-p, --purge
Cause stale (dead) messages to be purged from the database during an indexing
run. (Normally, stale messages are left in the database because of the
additional cost of compacting away the storage that they take up.)
-F, --fast-index
When processing maildir and MH folders,
mairix
normally compares the mtime and size of each message against the values stored
in the database. If they have changed, the message will be rescanned. This
check requires each message file to be stat'ed. For large numbers of messages
in these folder types, this can be a sizeable overhead.
This option tells
mairix
to assume that when a message currently on-disc has a name matching one already
in the database, it should assume the message is unchanged.
A later indexing run without using this option will fix up any rescans that
were missed due to its use.
Search options
-a, --augment
Append newly matches messages to the current mfolder instead of creating the
mfolder from scratch.
-t, --threads
As well as returning the matched messages, also return every message in the
same thread as one of the real matches.
-r, --raw-output
Instead of creating an mfolder containing the matched messages, just show their
paths on stdout.
-x, --excerpt-output
Instead of creating an mfolder containing the matched messages, display an
excerpt from their headers on stdout. The excerpt shows To, Cc, From, Subject
and Date.
-o mfolder
--mfolder mfolder
Specify a temporary alternative path for the mfolder to use, overriding the
mfolder
directive in the rc file.
mairix
will refuse to output search results into any folder that appears to be amongst
those that are indexed. This is to prevent accidental deletion of emails.
Search patterns
t:word
Match
word
in the To: header.
c:word
Match
word
in the Cc: header.
f:word
Match
word
in the From: header.
s:word
Match
word
in the Subject: header.
m:word
Match
word
in the Message-ID: header.
b:word
Match
word
in the message body.
Message body
is taken to mean any body part of type text/plain or text/html. For text/html,
text within meta tags is ignored. In particular, the URLs inside <A
HREF="..."> tags are not currently indexed. Non-text attachments are ignored.
If there's an attachment of type message/rfc822, this is parsed and the match
is performed on this sub-message too. If a hit occurs, the enclosing message
is treated as having a hit.
d:[start-datespec]-[end-datespec]
Match messages with Date: headers lying in the specific range.
z:[low-size]-[high-size]
Match messages whose size lies in the specified range. If the
low-size
argument is omitted it defaults to zero. If the
high-size
argument is omitted it defaults to infinite size.
For example, to match messages between 10kilobytes and 20kilobytes in size, the
following search term can be used:
mairix z:10k-20k
The suffix 'k' on a number means multiply by 1024, and the suffix 'M' on a
number means multiply by 1024*1024.
n:word
Match
word
occurring as the name of an attachment in the message. Since attachment names
are usually long, this option would usually be used in the substring form. So
mairix n:mairix=
would match all messages which have attachments whose names contain the
substring
mairix.
The attachment name is determined from the name=xxx or filename=xxx qualifiers
on the Content-Type: and Content-Disposition: headers respectively.
F:flags
Match messages with particular flag settings. The available flags are 's'
meaning seen, 'r' meaning replied, and 'f' meaning flagged. The flags are
case-insensitive. A flag letter may be prefixed by a '-' to negate its sense. Thus
mairix F:-s d:1w-
would match any unread message less than a week old, and
mairix F:f-r d:-1m
would match any flagged message older than a month which you haven't replied to yet.
Note that the flag characters and their meanings agree with those used as the
suffix letters on message filenames in maildir folders.
Searching for a match amongst more than one part of a message
Multiple body parts may be grouped together, if a match in any of them is
sought. Common examples follow.
tc:word
Match
word
in either the To: or Cc: headers (or both).
bs:word
Match
word
in either the Subject: header or the message body (or both).
The
a:
search pattern is an abbreviation for
tcf:;
i.e. match the word in the To:, Cc: or From: headers. ("a" stands for
"address" in this case.)
Match words
The
word
argument to the search strings can take various forms.
~word
Match messages
not
containing the word.
word1,word2
This matches if both the words are matched in the specified message part.
word1/word2
This matches if either of the words are matched in the specified message part.
substring=
Match any word containing
substring
as a substring
substring=N
Match any word containing
substring,
allowing up to
N
errors in the match. For example, if
N
is 1, a single error is allowed, where an error can be
*
a missing letter
*
an extra letter
*
a different letter.
^substring=
Match any word containing
substring
as a substring, with the requirement that
substring
occurs at the beginning of the matched word.
Precedence matters
The binding order of the constructions is:
1.
Individual command line arguments define separate conditions which are AND-ed
together
2.
Within a single argument, the letters before the colon define which message
parts the expression applies to. If there is no colon, the expression applies
to all the headers listed earlier and the body.
3.
After the colon, commas delineate separate disjuncts, which are
OR-ed together.
4.
Each disjunct may contain separate conjuncts, which are separated
by plus signs. These conditions are AND-ed together.
5.
Each conjunct may start with a tilde to negate it, and may be
followed by a slash to indicate a substring match, optionally
followed by an integer to define the maximum number of errors
allowed.
Date specification
This section describes the syntax used for specifying dates when
searching using the `d:' option.
Dates are specified as a range. The start and end of the range can both be
specified. Alternatively, if the start is omitted, it is treated as being the
beginning of time. If the end is omitted, it is treated as the current time.
There are 4 basic formats:
d:start-end
Specify both start and end explicitly
d:start-
Specify start, end is the current time
d:-end
Specify end, start is 'a long time ago' (i.e. early enough to include any
message).
d:period
Specify start and end implicitly, as the start and end of the
period given.
The start and end can be specified either absolute or relative. A relative
endpoint is given as a number followed by a single letter defining the scaling:
letter
short for
example
meaning
d
days
3d
3 days
w
weeks
2w
2 weeks (14 days)
m
months
5m
5 months (150 days)
y
years
4y
4 years (4*365 days)
Months are always treated as 30 days, and years as 365 days, for
this purpose.
Absolute times can be specified in many forms. Some forms have different
meanings when they define a start date from that when they define an end date.
Where a single expression specifies both the start and end (i.e. where the
argument to d: doesn't contain a `-'), it will usually have different
interpretations in the two cases.
In the examples below, suppose the current date is Sunday May 18th,
2003 (when I started to write this material.)
Example
Start date
End date
Notes
d:20030301-20030425
March 1st, 2003
25th April, 2003
d:030301-030425
March 1st, 2003
April 25th, 2003
century assumed
d:mar1-apr25
March 1st, 2003
April 25th, 2003
d:Mar1-Apr25
March 1st, 2003
April 25th, 2003
case insensitive
d:MAR1-APR25
March 1st, 2003
April 25th, 2003
case insensitive
d:1mar-25apr
March 1st, 2003
April 25th, 2003
date and month in either order
d:2002
January 1st, 2002
December 31st, 2002
whole year
d:mar
March 1st, 2003
March 31st, 2003
most recent March
d:oct
October 1st, 2002
October 31st, 2002
most recent October
d:21oct-mar
October 21st, 2002
March 31st, 2003
start before end
d:21apr-mar
April 21st, 2002
March 31st, 2003
start before end
d:21apr-
April 21st, 2003
May 18th, 2003
end omitted
d:-21apr
January 1st, 1900
April 21st, 2003
start omitted
d:6w-2w
April 6th, 2003
May 4th, 2003
both dates relative
d:21apr-1w
April 21st, 2003
May 11th, 2003
one date relative
d:21apr-2y
April 21st, 2001
May 11th, 2001
start before end
d:99-11
January 1st, 1999
May 11th, 2003
2 digits are a day of the month if possible, otherwise a year
d:99oct-1oct
October 1st, 1999
October 1st, 2002
end before now, single digit is a day of the month
d:99oct-01oct
October 1st, 1999
October 31st, 2001
2 digits starting with zero treated as a year
d:oct99-oct1
October 1st, 1999
October 1st, 2002
day and month in either order
d:oct99-oct01
October 1st, 1999
October 31st, 2001
year and month in either order
The principles in the table work as follows.
•
When the expression defines a period of more than a day (i.e. if a month or
year is specified), the earliest day in the period is taken when the start date
is defined, and the last day in the period if the end of the range is being
defined.
•
The end date is always taken to be on or before the current date.
•
The start date is always taken to be on or before the end date.
SETTING UP THE MATCH FOLDER
If the match folder does not exist when running in search mode, it is
automatically created. For 'mformat=maildir' (the default), this
should be all you need to do. If you use 'mformat=mh', you may have to
run some commands before your mailer will recognize the folder. e.g.
for mutt, you could do
Suppose I don't mind a few spurious matches on the address, I want a wider date
range, and I suspect that some messages I replied to might have had the subject
keyword spelt wrongly (let's allow up to 2 errors):
mairix d:6m- f:richard s:chrony=2
NOTES
mairix
works exclusively in terms of
words.
The index that's built
in indexing mode contains a table of which words occur in which
messages. Hence, the search capability is based on finding messages
that contain particular words.
mairix
defines a word as any string of alphanumeric characters + underscore. Any
whitespace, punctuation, hyphens etc are treated as word boundaries.
mairix
has special handling for the To:, Cc: and From: headers.
Besides the normal word scan, these headers are scanned a second time,
where the characters '@', '-' and '.' are also treated as word
characters. This allows most (if not all) email addresses to appear in
the database as single words. So if you have a mail from
wibble@foobar.zzz, it will match on both these searches
It should be clear by now that the searching cannot be used to find messages
matching general regular expressions. This has never been much of a
limitation. Most searches are for particular keywords that were in the
messages, or details of the recipients, or the approximate date.
It's also worth pointing out that there is no 'locality' information
stored, so you can't search for messages that have one words 'close' to
some other word. For every message and every word, there is a simple
yes/no condition stored - whether the message contains the word in a
particular header or in the body. So far this has proved to be
adequate.
mairix
has a similar feel to using an Internet search engine.
FILES
~/.mairixrc
AUTHOR
Copyright (C) 2002-2006 Richard P. Curnow <rc@rc0.org.uk>