I just added a new feature to notmuch that I've been wanting for a very long time. It's a new option to "notmuch search" as follows:
--output=(summary|threads|messages|files|tags) The "summary" value is the default and behaves as "notmuch search" always has, (printing a one-line summary with a bunch of information about each thread). Each of the other options causes "notmuch search" to print only a single value, (thread ID, message ID, filename, or tag), one-per-line[*]. This is intended to be useful in scripts to do things as follows: for spamfile in $(notmuch search tag:spam); do rm $spamfile done Or what have you. I hope people find this useful. See "notmuch help search" for more details. Oh, and with this change, the existing "notmuch search-tags" command is redundant, (it behaves in the same way as "notmuch search --output=tags"). I think I'll drop search-tags from the list of documented commands, (but it probably won't be too painful to continue to support it as a deprecated command name). I'm also wondering about "notmuch count". With the new feature above, one could count matching messages as "notmuch count" does with something like: notmuch search --output=messages <search-terms> | wc -l That's a bit of a mouthful compared to "notmuch count", but the new command also enables the counting of matching threads: notmuch search --output=threads <search-terms> | wc -l which is something that "notmuch count" doesn't do. I don't think I'll change "notmuch count". It's probably still useful, (doing what it's documented to do), and it's also likely much more efficient than either of the above "notmuch search" pipelines. -Carl [*] Or, when under the influence of --format=json, the results are printed as a single JSON array. -- carl.d.worth at intel.com -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://notmuchmail.org/pipermail/notmuch/attachments/20101028/e7c0a790/attachment.pgp>