Re: Searching in the index is not documented
* On Thu, Aug 17, 2006 Alan Mackenzie (acm@xxxxxx) muttered:
> Guten Tag, Michael!
Moin Alan!
> I would have found it useful to have read this explicitly in the
> manual 2 months ago.
If you think the manual is missing something provide a patch and see if
it gets included. Improving docs is something everyone can do. :)
> Incidentally, what is the significance of the spaces in "~f joe | ~s
> joe"? Does "~fjoe" mean the same as "~f joe"? What about "~f joe"?
> The manual seems to indicate a single space is needed, but is
> frustratingly vague about it.
The amount of spaces doesn't matter and is ignored as long as it's one
argument. So yes "~fjoe" "~f joe" and "~f joe" are equivalent.
~f "joe foo" is another case.
> Incidentally(2), can I search for a literal "~f" in the Subject: header
> by a typing something like: "/\~f"?
Seems simple_search breakes here (bug?). "error in pattern at: \~f"
"~s \~f" works fine. As does "~f \~f | ~s \~f".
I almost never use simple_search though. Please also see
http://wiki.mutt.org/?PatternQuoting
> > > (iii) If there are several instances of "foo", in what order does mutt
> > > find them? I would guess that it would use the order the mails are
> > > currently sorted in.
>
> > correct.
>
> Why do I have to guess?
Isn't that what's really obvious. Search from top to bottom in the
current order. Everything else would be VERY surprising to the user. And
most certainly need extensive documentation. I don't think the current
search behavioir does in this case. One sentence explaining it
couldn't hurt though. See doc patches above.
> > > (iv) Can I somehow search my mailbox for a pattern? (e.g. "~fAlan")?
> I didn't learn that they could be also used for searching until
> Tuesday of this week, when I tried it out.
Shrug. If I remember correctly, I never even bothered to check the manual
*if* searching with patterns was possible. It just seemed natural when I
learned about pattern matching. Just try things out more?
Again if you think the manual could be improved: s.a.
HTH,
Michael
--
"...Unix, MS-DOS, and Windows NT (also known as the Good, the Bad, and
the Ugly)."
(By Matt Welsh)
PGP-Key-ID: 0xDC1A44DD
Jabber: init[0]@amessage.de