Re: How to search for ticked articles

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Julien Cubizolles <j.cubizolles@free.fr> writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>
>> Julien Cubizolles <j.cubizolles@free.fr> writes:
>>
>>> I used to use the "mark:flag" search query to look for ticked articles
>>> with gnus-search. I recently noticed that it doesn't return any articles
>>> anymore in groups with ticked articles.
>>>
>>> What exactly does the "flag" mark represent, and is there a better way
>>> to look for dormant or ticked articles ?
>>
>> These things are all search-engine dependent. Notmuch will turn
>> "mark:flag" into "tag:flag", and IMAP will turn it into "FLAGGED".
>>
>> What search engine are you using in this case? The first thing to try
>> is always shutting off search parsing (either fully, by setting
>> `gnus-search-use-parsed-queries' to nil, or temporarily, using the
>> prefix argument). Then get the search working using the search engine's
>> native syntax. Then come back here and tell me how it went :)
>
> I'm using the imap search engine. When I shut off search parsing,
> the "FLAGGED" search query does indeed return the ticked articles, when
> "mark:flag" didn't. But I tried again (with search parsing on) with the
> query "mark:flagged" and it works ! 

Hmm, that doesn't seem right; you can see that both "mark:flag" and
"mark:flagged" get transformed into the same IMAP search term, namely
"FLAGGED".

(let ((srv (make-instance 'gnus-search-imap))
      (flag (gnus-search-parse-query "mark:flagged"))
      (flagged (gnus-search-parse-query "mark:flag")))
  (format
   "%s == %s"
   (gnus-search-transform srv flag)
   (gnus-search-transform srv flagged))) => "FLAGGED == FLAGGED"

I just tried it with an IMAP server, and all of "mark:flag",
"mark:flagged", and "mark:!" were transformed into "FLAGGED" and
produced the right search results.

If you have a moment, you could try edebugging the
`gnus-search-imap-search-command' function, and seeing what's happening
there. The QUERY parameter should already be "FLAGGED" at that point.

Thanks,
Eric