Hi Xu, On Sat, Jul 18, 2015 at 10:54:30AM -0400, Xu Wang wrote: > > First note that I believe notmuch search is case insensitive by > default, so your grep should be case insensitive as well.
Good point, I tried that, didn't change the numbers much. The number of matches from grep went up to 24, whereas notmuch count says 463. > More importantly, I'm not sure how 'no NEAR "plain text" ' syntax is > parsed. Maybe it is parsed as {no NEAR plain} or {text}. > Exactly, that's what I do not understand. > You would like to search for the exact phrase, correct? How about the > following? > > notmuch search no adj plain adj text Good suggestion. I tried it, and gives me very consistent numbers: $ notmuch count -- no ADJ plain ADJ text 20 $ notmuch show -- $(notmuch search --output=messages -- no NEAR \"plain\ text\") | \ grep -c -iE 'plain[[:space:]/]+text' 24 Of course this does not help me solve my original goal, but I guess now I can try different queries based on your idea. Thanks a lot! -- Suvayu Open source is the future. It sets us free.