NOTMUCH-SHOW(1)

NAME

       notmuch-show - show messages matching the given search terms

SYNOPSIS

       notmuch show [option ...] <search-term> ...

DESCRIPTION

       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 mes‐
       sage 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  de‐
              faults 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,  (mes-
                     sage,  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  multi‐
                     part 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 --en-
                     tire-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  format‐
                     ted  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 spec‐
                     ify 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 decod‐
                     ing  (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 in‐
              tended for programs that invoke notmuch(1) internally. If  omit‐
              ted, 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  for‐
              mats.

              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.

       --sort=(newest-first|oldest-first)
              This option can be used to present results in either chronologi‐
              cal order (oldest-first) or reverse  chronological  order  (new-
              est-first).

              Only  threads  as  a  whole are reordered.  Ordering of messages
              within each thread will not be affected by this flag, since that
              order is always determined by the thread's replies.

              By  default,  results will be displayed in reverse chronological
              order, (that is, the newest results will be displayed first).

       --verify
              Compute and report the validity of any MIME cryptographic signa‐
              tures  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 multi‐
              part/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 de‐
              cryption will be reported (currently only supported with  --for-
              mat=json  and  --format=sexp)  and  on successful decryption the
              multipart/encrypted part will be replaced by the decrypted  con‐
              tent.

              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 pro‐
              vide 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  cleart‐ │       │ X    │ X    │ X     │
                       │ext  if  ses‐ │       │      │      │       │
                       │sion  key  is │       │      │      │       │
                       │already known │       │      │      │       │
                       ├──────────────┼───────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
                       │Use    secret │       │      │ X    │ X     │
                       │keys  to show │       │      │      │       │
                       │cleartext     │       │      │      │       │
                       ├──────────────┼───────┼──────┼──────┼───────┤
                       │Stash     any │       │      │      │ X     │
                       │newly  recov‐ │       │      │      │       │
                       │ered  session │       │      │      │       │
                       │keys,   rein‐ │       │      │      │       │
                       │dexing   mes‐ │       │      │      │       │
                       │sage if found │       │      │      │       │
                       └──────────────┴───────┴──────┴──────┴───────┘

              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.ex‐
              clude_tags  from the search results (the default) or not. In ei‐
              ther 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  re‐
              turned  regardless (with the excluded flag being set when appro‐
              priate) 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(1) command.

CONFIGURATION

       Structured  output (json / sexp) is influenced by the configuration op‐
       tion show.extra_headers. See notmuch-config(1) for details.

EXIT STATUS

       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.

SEE ALSO

       notmuch(1), notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-dump(1),  not‐
       much-hooks(5),   notmuch-insert(1),  notmuch-new(1),  notmuch-reply(1),
       notmuch-restore(1),  notmuch-search(1),  notmuch-search-terms(7),  not‐
       much-tag(1)

AUTHOR

       Carl Worth and many others

COPYRIGHT

       2009-2022, Carl Worth and many others

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