sortm - sort nmh messages

       When sortm complains about a message which it can't temporally order,  it  complains  about  the  message
       number prior to sorting.  It should indicate what the message number will be after sorting.

nmh-1.8                                            2014-03-23                                         SORTM(1mh)

       If a folder is given, it will become the current folder.  If the current message  is  moved,  sortm  will
       preserve its status as current.

       `+folder' defaults to the current folder
       `msgs' defaults to all without -noall, has no default with -noall
       `-all'
       `-datefield' defaults to date
       `-notextfield'
       `-noverbose'
       `-nolimit'
       `-nocheck'

sortm  sorts  the  specified  messages  in  the  named folder according to the chronological order of the
       “Date:” field of each message.

       If no messages are specified, the default is all messages in the folder.  However,  if  no  messages  are
       specified  and  the -noall switch is enabled, then sortm reports that as an error and exits with non-zero
       status.  -noall is most useful in the user's profile, to avoid inadvertent sorting of an  entire  folder.
       The  -all  switch can then be used on the command line to disable it.  Of course, a message specification
       of all can be used in any case.

       The -verbose switch directs sortm to tell the user the general actions that it is  taking  to  place  the
       folder in sorted order.

       The -datefieldfield switch tells sortm the name of the field to use when making the date comparison.  If
       the  user  has  a  special  field  in  each  message,  such as “BB-Posted:” or “Delivery-Date:”, then the
       -datefield switch can be used to direct sortm which field to examine.

       The -textfieldfield switch causes sortm to sort messages by the specified text  field.   All  characters
       except  letters and numbers are stripped and the resulting strings are sorted datefield-major, textfield-
       minor, using a case insensitive comparison.  If this field is “subject”, any leading  "re:"  is  stripped
       off.

       With  -textfieldfield,  if  -limitdays is specified, messages with the same textfields that are dated
       within `days' of each other appear together.  Specifying -nolimit makes the limit infinity.  With  -limit0, the sort is instead simply textfield-major.

       For  example,  to  order a folder by date-major, grouping messages with the same subject on the same date
       together, use:

            sortm -textfield subject +folder

       sortm always issues a warning for each message that is missing a “Date:” field, has a “Date:” field  that
       cannot  be parsed, or has a format error in any header field.  With the -check switch, sortm inhibits all
       modifications to the folder if there are any such messages, and exits with  non-zero  status.   With  the
       default  of  -nocheck,  sortm  sorts  messages  with  a missing or invalid “Date:” field using their file
       modification times.

       When ordering messages based on their dates, if they have the same dates, their original message order is
       preserved.

       $HOME/.mh_profile          The user profile

       Timezones used to be ignored when comparing dates: they aren't any more.

       Messages  which  were  in  the  folder,  but  not specified by `msgs', used to be moved to the end of the
       folder; now such messages are left untouched.

       sortm sometimes did not preserve the message numbering in a folder (e.g., messages 1,  3,  and  5,  might
       have  been  renumbered  to  1, 2, 3 after sorting).  This was a bug, and has been fixed.  To compress the
       message numbering in a folder, use “folder-pack” as always.

       sortm - sort nmh messages

       Path:                To determine the user's nmh directory
       Current-Folder:      To find the default current folder

folder(1)

sortm [-help] [-version] [+folder] [msgs] [-all | -noall] [-datefieldfield] [-textfieldfield]
            [-notextfield] [-limitdays] [-nolimit] [-check | -nocheck] [-verbose | -noverbose]