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5. Searching in Mutt

Many of Mutt's commands allow you to specify a pattern to match (tag-pattern, delete-pattern, etc.). There are two methods to selecting messages. One is to use a simple range of messages. For example, to select messages one through twenty, you can use:

Tag messages matching: 1-20

The other method is to specify a search pattern. This is similar to the syntax of DejaNews, one of the WWW search engines. Mutt understands the following keywords:

To find messages that match more than one criterion, just append additional search parameters to your string. For example:

~t mutt ~f elkins

would select messages which contain the word ``mutt'' in the list of recipients and that have the word ``elkins'' in the FROM header field.

To do a logical OR operation, use the vertical bar (|). Example:

~t mutt | ~c mutt

would select all messages which contain the word ``mutt'' in either the TO or CC header fields.

You can also combined AND and OR operations in a single search for more complex operations. AND has precendence over the OR operation, so in the following example:

~f elkins ~t mutt | ~f elkins ~c mutt

is grouped logically as follows:

[ (FROM elkins) AND (TO mutt) ] OR [ (FROM elkins) AND (CC mutt) ]


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