Re: Finding messages from one person replied to by another?
* Michael Kjorling <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxx> [01-18-09 13:23]:
>
> So let's take a real life example. A fairly busy mailing list (let's
> say between 500 and 1500 posts per month), with some people being much
> more active than others. somebody@xxxxxxxxxxx is an active poster, and
> another@xxxxxxxxxxx is less so but still a fairly regular contributor.
> I remember that "somebody" made a post in the not too distant past
> (say, the last half year), to which "another" replied, spawning a
> discussion that is relevant to me now, but I don't remember the exact
> (perhaps technical) terms used in that discussion, only the gist of
> the discussion. (That's part of the reason why I want to find it.)
> However, while "another" posts less often than "somebody", there are
> still enough posts from that person as well that simply filtering on
> sender will give a really long list of hits - especially if I don't
> remember when the discussion took place. The mailing list posts are
> saved in a given folder and once I identify the thread, obviously I
> can easily go to the main mailbox to read it in full.
>
> Now. How would I invoke mairix to help me with this scenario? Because
> unless I am missing something big, mairix won't really help (it works
> on a message-by-message basis and has no understanding of threads) and
> by the time mairix has made its selection and I am in its output
> mailbox, there is no easy way to reference the other messages in the
> threads that the messages found by mairix are a part of.
from the mairix(1) man page:
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
Intead 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.
> The closest I can think of is still to use mutt's filtering
> capabilities in the original mailbox to find all threads with posts
> from both individuals, and then go through that manually, but that can
> mean having to go through a potentially huge list of irrelevant posts.
> I'm hoping that either mutt or some other tool would be able to help
> me sift through that list.
>
13:40 wahoo:~ > mairix --help
mairix 0.21, Copyright (C) 2002-2007 Richard P. Curnow
mairix comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see the GNU General Public License for details.
mairix [-h] : Show help
mairix [-f <rcfile>] [-v] [-p] [-F] : Build index
mairix [-f <rcfile>] [-a] [-t] expr1 ... exprN : Run search
mairix [-f <rcfile>] -d : Dump database to stdout
-h : show this help
-f <rcfile> : use alternative rc file (default ~/.mairixrc)
-V : show version
-v : be verbose
-p : purge messages that no longer exist
-F : fast scan for maildir and MH folders (no mtime or size checks)
-a : add new matches to match folder (default : clear it first)
-t : include all messages in same threads as matching messages
-o <mfolder> : override setting of mfolder from mairixrc file
-r : force raw output regardless of mformat setting in mairixrc file
expr_i : search expression (all expr's AND'ed together):
word : match word in message body and major headers
t:word : match word in To: header
c:word : match word in Cc: header
f:word : match word in From: header
a:word : match word in To:, Cc: or From: headers (address)
s:word : match word in Subject: header
b:word : match word in message body
m:word : match word in Message-ID: header
n:word : match name of attachment within message
F:flags : match on message flags (s=seen,r=replied,f=flagged,-=negate)
p:substring : match substring of path
d:start-end : match date range
z:low-high : match messages in size range
bs:word : match word in Subject: header or body (or any other group
of prefixes)
s:word1,word2 : match both words in Subject:
s:word1/word2 : match either word or both words in Subject:
s:~word : match messages not containing word in Subject:
s:substring= : match substring in any word in Subject:
s:^substring= : match left-anchored substring in any word in Subject:
s:substring=2 : match substring with <=2 errors in any word in Subject:
(See documentation for more examples)
You *have* read the man pages, mairix(1) and marixrc(5).
--
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