IMAP searching - any thoughts ?

[dme@dme.org]

I often want to search through one (or more) IMAP folder(s) for
something.  At the moment that's laborious, as nnir.el doesn't work
for IMAP and entering the folder and then figuring out how to search
is a pain.

Has anyone thought about something like the nnweb.el searching tools
for IMAP servers ?

I've had a look, and I'm out of my elisp/gnus depth.  Experimentation
so far has led to the following:

(defun dme-imap-search (s)
  "a very shoddy way to use imap searching in Gnus.  point must be on the
INBOX line in the group list buffer.  sorry."
  (interactive "ssearch string: ")
  (let* ((b (imap-open "localhost"))
	(d (imap-authenticate "dme" "a strange tale indeed" b))
	(d (imap-mailbox-select "INBOX" nil b))
	(msgs (imap-search s b))
	(imap-close b))
    (gnus-group-read-group nil nil nil msgs)
  )
)

which has already proved very useful, but it is obviously awful.  For
a start, it requires the user to understand the IMAP search primitive
(which is actually okay, as it's quite good).

Any alternatives ?

dme.