notmuch-show - show messages matching the given search terms
notmuch show [option ...]
<search-term> ...
Shows all messages matching the search terms.
See notmuch-search-terms(7) 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
- --entire-thread=(true|false)
- If true, notmuch show 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 (default for
messages)
- 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.html
- raw (default if
--part is given)
- 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(1) 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.
- --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) to provide any needed credentials. Without one, the
decryption will fail.
Note: setting either true or stash here implies
--verify.
Here is a table that summarizes each of these policies:
|
false |
auto |
true |
stash |
| Show cleartext if session key is
already known |
|
X |
X |
X |
| Use secret keys to show
cleartext |
|
|
X |
X |
| Stash any newly recovered session
keys, reindexing message if found |
|
|
|
X |
Note: --decrypt=stash requires write access to the
database. Otherwise, notmuch show operates entirely in read-only
mode.
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) notmuch show 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 notmuch show 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.
This command supports the following special exit status codes
- 20
- The requested format version is too old.
- 21
- The requested format version is too new.
notmuch(1), notmuch-config(1),
notmuch-count(1), notmuch-dump(1), notmuch-hooks(5),
notmuch-insert(1), notmuch-new(1), notmuch-reply(1),
notmuch-restore(1), notmuch-search(1),
notmuch-search-terms(7), notmuch-tag(1)
Carl Worth and many others
2009-2021, Carl Worth and many others