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Selection Patterns

This is where mutt starts getting powerful: lots of operations can affect many messages at once. You can tag a group of messages (see section 2.8.2 below) and do something to them (delete them, move them, print them), or you can limit the number of messages shown in the index view (see section 2.8.3 below) by providing criteria for what you'd like to show. Both of these require an understanding of selection patterns. A brief description of patterns follows, and a complete list can be found in section A at the end of this document. If they're confusing, don't use them, but if you can get the hang of using patterns you can do lots of interesting things that will speed up your emailing. Two of these tricks are group actions on a set of email (you tag them and then do what you want with them), and limiting the messages shown to you in the index based on some sort of criteria. These are both described in the next two sections. But first, here are a couple of simple ones.

Figure 7: Simple Patterns
\begin{figure}\begin{tabular}{l\vert l}
Limiter & Limits messages shown to: \\
...
...rtain expression in any header
or the body \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{figure}

You can use multiple criteria by separating them with a space, like this. For example, the following selects all messages that were sent by someone with Wood in the address field AND that were sent within the last two weeks:

~f Wood ~d<2w

and the following would select any message that is both new and from Ericka:

~N ~f Ericka

The logical ``OR'' is indicated with the pipe symbol, so the following would select anything with the word ``viagra'' or `OEM'' in the subject line (e.g., for deletion):

l viagra|OEM

and the following would select all messages from Wood or Feldman or Dordyke:

~f Wood|~f Feldman|~f Dordyke

Watch out for spaces after the pipe symbol, which will interfere with your expression.


next up previous contents
Next: Tagging and Flags Up: Operating on Multiple Messages Previous: Operating on Multiple Messages   Contents
Randall Wood 2009-12-02