complex mail folder searches
A. Giacomelli
My mailbox is growing, and it is starting to get difficult
to retrieve the information I need.
This applies especially to messages from 3/4 mailing lists,
which are to me very important resources.
I would like to know if there exists a sort of
"mail folder search engine" which, given a keyword as
input, will produce as output a list of folders
(and messages therein) where the keyword is found.
The mail programs which I know allow to search only
in one folder at a time, and this is not what I'm
looking for.
I was thinking of assembling something using scripts with
procmail etc, but before getting into it I would like
to know that I'm not re-inventing the wheel.
TIA for any feedback,
Ciao.
--
=========================================
Andrea Giacomelli
Centre for Advanced Studies, Research and
Development in Sardinia
Environment Division
http://www.crs4.it/~andreag
=========================================
era eriksson
posted to comp.mail.misc:
> I would like to know if there exists a sort of
> "mail folder search engine" which, given a keyword as
> input, will produce as output a list of folders
> (and messages therein) where the keyword is found.
> The mail programs which I know allow to search only
> in one folder at a time, and this is not what I'm
> looking for.
If you can afford to store one message per file, things will suddenly
seem a lot easier. Have you tried MH format? Then you can grep etc to
your heart's content.
/* era */
Huh? An on-topic message from tin.it!
--
.obBotBait: It shouldn't even matter whether <http://www.iki.fi/~era/>
I am a resident of the state of Washington. <http://members.xoom.com/procmail/>
Kyle Tucker
>
> I would like to know if there exists a sort of
> "mail folder search engine" which, given a keyword as
> input, will produce as output a list of folders
> (and messages therein) where the keyword is found.
> The mail programs which I know allow to search only
> in one folder at a time, and this is not what I'm
> looking for.
>
> procmail etc, but before getting into it I would like
> to know that I'm not re-inventing the wheel.
Z-Mail for Unix will search a currently open folder for regular
expressions, but you could write a small function in it's internal
scripting language "zscript" which could do 'foreach' loop to run
its filter command on each folder and write out matches to a new temp
folder. While I don't have access to a Z-Mail client now, I'd imagine
10 lines of zscript code could do this for you. You can even easily
add a button to the GUI via zscript which would call this function on
demand which would popup up a window querying you for the string to set
your search variable to. It's a very nice mail tool. I think I paid $99
for my copy for Solaris. See http://www.netmanage.com/products/zmail.
--
- Kyle
--------------------------------------------------------
UNIX Sys Admin - Presently contracting - ky...@shore.net
--------------------------------------------------------
Nancy this-address-is-valid McGough
> I would like to know if there exists a sort of
> "mail folder search engine" which, given a keyword as
> input, will produce as output a list of folders
> (and messages therein) where the keyword is found.
Pine 4 can search across mailboxes and present you with a list of
the folders that matched your search. Here's how you do it:
Type In oder to...
==== =============
L list your folder collections
<select> select the collection that you want to search
; select
T text
C content select
<string> string you want to match on
After the search, which is surprisingly fast, you'll get a
message that says "Select matched N folders" and the matched
folders will have X's next to them or be bolded (depending on how
you've got Pine configured). You can then zoom in on just those
folders by typing `Z'.
Note that you can create "virtual" folder collections that are
subsets of actual directories. To do this, go into Setup (S),
CollectionList (C), AddCollection (A) and then fill out the form,
including the View field. It accepts wild cards so, for example,
you could create a virtual collection of all your mailing lists
by putting `in-*-l' in the View field (assuming that you name
your incoming mailing list folders that way).
About your request for being able to get one list of all the
matched messages in all the folders that matched your search, I'm
not sure if Pine can do that, but it's something I'd *love* it to
be able to do. I'm crossposting this to comp.mail.pine to see if
anyone over there knows if that's possible. Right now I go to each
matched folder and repeat the search on that folder, which is
fast, and then get the list of matched msgs for that folder.
Note that Pine runs on *many* operating systems, e.g., right now
I'm using Windows 98 port and it's an incredibly powerful and
efficient mailer. And it follows Internet standards.
Good luck,
--
Nancy McGough http://www.ii.com/ Infinite Ink
--= Posted via PINE: Power Internet News & Email for Win/Unix =--
Joerg Uecker
> I would like to know if there exists a sort of
> "mail folder search engine"
Try grepmail, a perlsrcipt from:
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~dwc3q/index.html
--
J"org Uecker <j...@pirx.ruhr.de>