Re: New "gnus-search" syntax and interface

[Pankaj Jangid <pankaj@codeisgreat.org>]

Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:

> Under default settings, it should do nothing at all, and searches
> should behave exactly as before. The nnir.el library has been moved to
> lisp/obsolete, so code that requires it should not break, but it is no
> longer needed.
>
> If anything breaks for anyone out of the box (though it shouldn't),
> please let me know right away!
>
> Past that, the fun stuff comes if you set
> `gnus-search-use-parsed-queries' to t. That will enable the
> "generalized query syntax", a single search syntax that can be used
> across any supported search engine. That means you can mark an imap
> group and a maildir group indexed by notmuch (for instance), and issue
> a single query against both. The query will be parsed and transformed
> into strings that the engines accept, and you'll get the expected
> results.
>
> It also opens the door to some nice conveniences. You can search by
> Gnus mark, for instance. Or issue relative date queries like
> "since:4d" for messages in the last four days (no need to remember the
> IMAP date format!). Or "limit:20" for just some results. If you use
> EBDB, I've already pushed a change so you can auto-complete contact
> names or email addresses on keys like "from" or "to" or "cc". I'll
> propose a similar addition to BBDB soon.
>
> The syntax is fully documented in the new "Search Queries" section of
> the Gnus manual, but basically it looks like this:
>
> (from:bob or from:jane) -to:sam since:2w subject:"sam's surprise
> party"
>
> Terms can be negated with a minus sign, as above, or with a preceding
> "not". Terms can be auto-completed with TAB, or you can leave them
> abbreviated so long as they're not ambiguous. So the query above could
> be:
>
> (f:bob or f:jane) -t:sam sin:2w su:"sam's surprise party"


This is real convenience when you have lots of email
servers/groups. Thanks for this stuff. I have already played with it for
an hour or so.

> You can shut off the parsing and use the native syntax of whatever
> group you're searching on a per-engine, per-server, or per-search
> basis. See the manual for details.

Who would do that now.