Shows all messages matching the search terms.
See notmuch-search-terms for details of the supported syntax for <search-terms>.
The messages will be grouped and sorted based on the threading (all replies to a particular message will
appear immediately after that message in date order). The output is not indented by default, but depth
tags are printed so that proper indentation can be performed by a post-processor (such as the emacs
interface to notmuch).
Supported options for show include
--duplicate=N
Output duplicate number N. The numbering starts from 1, and matches the order used by search--duplicate and search--output=files--entire-thread=(true|false)
If true, notmuchshow outputs all messages in the thread of any message matching the search terms;
if false, it outputs only the matching messages. For --format=json and --format=sexp this defaults
to true. For other formats, this defaults to false.
--format=(text|json|sexp|mbox|raw)text(defaultformessages)
The default plain-text format has all text-content MIME parts decoded. Various components
in the output, (message, header, body, attachment, and MIME part), will be delimited by
easily-parsed markers. Each marker consists of a Control-L character (ASCII decimal 12),
the name of the marker, and then either an opening or closing brace, ('{' or '}'), to
either open or close the component. For a multipart MIME message, these parts will be
nested.
json The output is formatted with Javascript Object Notation (JSON). This format is more robust
than the text format for automated processing. The nested structure of multipart MIME
messages is reflected in nested JSON output. By default JSON output includes all messages
in a matching thread; that is, by default, --format=json sets --entire-thread. The caller
can disable this behaviour by setting --entire-thread=false. The JSON output is always
encoded as UTF-8 and any message content included in the output will be charset-converted
to UTF-8.
sexp The output is formatted as the Lisp s-expression (sexp) equivalent of the JSON format
above. Objects are formatted as property lists whose keys are keywords (symbols preceded by
a colon). True is formatted as t and both false and null are formatted as nil. As for JSON,
the s-expression output is always encoded as UTF-8.
mbox All matching messages are output in the traditional, Unix mbox format with each message
being prefixed by a line beginning with "From " and a blank line separating each message.
Lines in the message content beginning with "From " (preceded by zero or more '>'
characters) have an additional '>' character added. This reversible escaping is termed
"mboxrd" format and described in detail here:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/mail-mbox-formats.htmlraw(defaultif--partisgiven)
Write the raw bytes of the given MIME part of a message to standard out. For this format,
it is an error to specify a query that matches more than one message.
If the specified part is a leaf part, this outputs the body of the part after performing
content transfer decoding (but no charset conversion). This is suitable for saving
attachments, for example.
For a multipart or message part, the output includes the part headers as well as the body
(including all child parts). No decoding is performed because multipart and message parts
cannot have non-trivial content transfer encoding. Consumers of this may need to implement
MIME decoding and similar functions.
--format-version=N
Use the specified structured output format version. This is intended for programs that invoke
notmuch internally. If omitted, the latest supported version will be used.
--part=N
Output the single decoded MIME part N of a single message. The search terms must match only a
single message. Message parts are numbered in a depth-first walk of the message MIME structure,
and are identified in the 'json', 'sexp' or 'text' output formats.
Note that even a message with no MIME structure or a single body part still has two MIME parts:
part 0 is the whole message (headers and body) and part 1 is just the body.
--sort=(newest-first|oldest-first)
This option can be used to present results in either chronological order (oldest-first) or reverse
chronological order (newest-first).
Only threads as a whole are reordered. Ordering of messages within each thread will not be
affected by this flag, since that order is always determined by the thread's replies.
By default, results will be displayed in reverse chronological order, (that is, the newest results
will be displayed first).
--offset=[-]N
Skip displaying the first N results. With the leading '-', start at the Nth result from the end.
--limit=N
Limit the number of displayed results to N.
--verify
Compute and report the validity of any MIME cryptographic signatures found in the selected content
(e.g., "multipart/signed" parts). Status of the signature will be reported (currently only
supported with --format=json and --format=sexp), and the multipart/signed part will be replaced by
the signed data.
--decrypt=(false|auto|true|stash)
If true, decrypt any MIME encrypted parts found in the selected content (e.g.,
"multipart/encrypted" parts). Status of the decryption will be reported (currently only supported
with --format=json and --format=sexp) and on successful decryption the multipart/encrypted part
will be replaced by the decrypted content.
stash behaves like true, but upon successful decryption it will also stash the message's session
key in the database, and index the cleartext of the message, enabling automatic decryption in the
future.
If auto, and a session key is already known for the message, then it will be decrypted, but
notmuch will not try to access the user's keys.
Use false to avoid even automatic decryption.
Non-automatic decryption (stash or true, in the absence of a stashed session key) expects a
functioning gpg-agent(1)toprovideanyneededcredentials.Withoutone,thedecryptionwillfail.Note:settingeithertrueorstashhereimplies--verify.Hereisatablethatsummarizeseachofthesepolicies:
┌─────────────────────┬───────┬──────┬──────┬───────┐
│ │ false │ auto │ true │ stash │
├─────────────────────┼───────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
│ Showcleartextif │ │ X │ X │ X │
│ sessionkeyis │ │ │ │ │
│ alreadyknown │ │ │ │ │
├─────────────────────┼───────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
│ Usesecretkeysto │ │ │ X │ X │
│ showcleartext │ │ │ │ │
├─────────────────────┼───────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
│ Stashanynewly │ │ │ │ X │
│ recoveredsession │ │ │ │ │
│ keys,reindexing │ │ │ │ │
│ messageiffound │ │ │ │ │
└─────────────────────┴───────┴──────┴──────┴───────┘
Note:--decrypt=stashrequireswriteaccesstothedatabase.Otherwise,notmuchshowoperatesentirelyinread-onlymode.Default:auto--exclude=(true|false)
Specify whether to omit threads only matching search.exclude_tags from the search results (the
default) or not. In either case the excluded message will be marked with the exclude flag (except
when output=mbox when there is nowhere to put the flag).
If --entire-thread is specified then complete threads are returned regardless (with the excluded
flag being set when appropriate) but threads that only match in an excluded message are not
returned when --exclude=true.
The default is --exclude=true.--body=(true|false)
If true (the default) notmuchshow includes the bodies of the messages in the output; if false,
bodies are omitted. --body=false is only implemented for the text, json and sexp formats and it
is incompatible with --part>0.
This is useful if the caller only needs the headers as body-less output is much faster and
substantially smaller.
--include-html
Include "text/html" parts as part of the output (currently only supported with --format=text,
--format=json and --format=sexp). By default, unless --part=N is used to select a specific part or
--include-html is used to include all "text/html" parts, no part with content type "text/html" is
included in the output.
A common use of notmuchshow is to display a single thread of email messages. For this, use a search term
of "thread:<thread-id>" as can be seen in the first column of output from the notmuch-search command.