how the date query works?

[Jani Nikula]

On Mon, 20 May 2013, David Belohrad <david at belohrad.ch> wrote:
> When I open in emacs search, and I type 'date:today', some output
> appears, but not the one I would expect.

The date: search expects a Xapian range expression, which requires ".."
to be present in the query. For example, date:today..today from
beginning of today to end of today, which I believe is what you're
after. Half open ranges are okay, too, so assuming you don't have much
mail from the future, simply date:today.. will do.

Unfortunately, due to a limitation in Xapian, we can't flag an error or
do the right thing given a date: search without the range expression
".."

> Is there any kind of manual how to use it? I'm of course particularly
> interested in 'today', 'yesterday', 'last week', 'last month' :)

The search terms manual page, 'man notmuch-search-terms', which is also
available at http://notmuchmail.org/manpages/notmuch-search-terms-7/
gives a pretty good summary on the date search, including the
limitations.

HTH,
Jani.