pick(1mh)pick(1mh)Namepick - select messages by content
Syntaxpick [ +folder ] [ msgs ] [ options ]
Description
The command lets you search messages in a folder on a diverse range of
search criteria.
You can search the mail headers or the text of some or all of the mes‐
sages within a folder for the specified criteria. You can use pattern
matching or date constraint operations. You can use the messages that
you find with other MH commands, or you can place them in a sequence.
By default, searches all the messages in the current folder. You can
specify a folder other than the current folder using the +foldername
option. Also, if you do not want to search all messages within the
folder, you can specify more than one message or a range of messages
using the message numbers.
You can search on the contents of the most common header fields by giv‐
ing the name of the field as an option, preceded by a dash (-). The
command allows you to specify the following header fields in this way:
To:, cc:, Date:, From:, and Subject:. You can also search the contents
of any other header field by preceding the name of the field with two
dashes.
The also allows you to introduce time constraints. You can search for
messages sent before, after, or between specified dates.
Combining pick with Other Commands
You can combine the output of directly with any MH command. by using a
technique called back-quoting. Enclose the command and its associated
arguments and options in back quotes (`). The system performs back-
quoted commands first. In the following example, the command is per‐
formed first, and the output is then listed by the command:
% scan `pick -from jones`
3 16/01 jones Meeting 10.00 tomorrow<<There wi
17 22/01 jones Minutes of meeting 16/1<<Any com
21 01/02 jones Next week's meeting cancelled<<T
If finds that there is no mail from Jones, it will output the illegal
character 0. This will cause the command to fail gracefully.
You can use back-quoting to combine with any MH command. For more
information on back-quoting, see the reference page for your ULTRIX
shell; for example, or
Options-after date
Searches for messages sent after the specified date. This
command can be used with pattern-matching options, and also
in conjunction with the -before option to specify a date
range. The date must be enclosed in double quotes ("). This
option accepts RFC 822-style dates. It also accepts days of
the week, and the special dates today and yesterday. Days of
the week always refer to days in the past; for example, sat‐
urday refers to last Saturday, not to next Saturday.
By default, consults the Date: field of the message. If you
wish to use the date in another header field, you can specify
this with the -datefield option.
-before date
Searches for messages sent before the specified date. This
command can be used with pattern-matching options, and also
in conjunction with the -after option to specify a date
range. The date must be enclosed in double quotes ("). This
option accepts RFC 822-style dates. It also accepts days of
the week, and the special dates today, tomorrow, and yester‐
day. Days of the week always refer to days in the past; for
example, saturday refers to last Saturday, not to next Satur‐
day.
By default, consults the Date: field of the message. If you
wish to use the date in another header field, you can specify
this with the -datefield option.
-cc pattern
Searches for the specified pattern in the cc: field of mes‐
sages. This option is case-insensitive: lower- and upper-
case letters are treated as identical. So a search for the
pattern phillips would also find Phillips and PHILLIPS. If
the pattern contains spaces, you must enclose it in double
quotes (").
-date pattern
Searches for messages sent on a specified date. This option
consults the Date: field of messages. You must enclose the
date that you give in double quotes (") if it contains spa‐
ces.
-datefield field
Specifies the header field to be used by the -before and
-after options. By default, these options consult the Date:
field of the message header. You can specify a different
header field by naming it with this option. The -datefield
option must precede the -before or -after options it is used
with.
-from pattern
Searches for the specified pattern in the From: field of mes‐
sages. This option is case-insensitive: lower- and upper-
case letters are treated as identical. So a search for the
pattern phillips would also find Phillips and PHILLIPS. If
the pattern contains spaces, you must enclose it in double
quotes (").
-help Prints a list of the valid options to this command.
-list
-nolist The -list option lists the numbers of the messages that have
met the search criteria. This is the usual default behavior
of If you use the -nolist option, indicates how many messages
met the search criteria.
If you use the -sequence option to add the messages found to
a sequence, the default behavior is to use the -nolist
option.
-public
-nopublic Sets the read permissions of sequences. Normally, when you
create a sequence with the -sequence option, the sequence
will not be accessible to other MH users. The -public option
makes the sequence accessible to other MH users. You can use
the -nopublic option to ensure that the sequence that you
create is only accessible to yourself.
-search pattern
Searches the entire message for the specified string. Each
line of the message is searched for the pattern that you
specify. The -search option is a modified Like this option
is case-sensitive; it treats upper- and lower-case letters as
different. So a search for the word strawberries would not
find a messages which contained the word STRAWBERRIES. If
the search pattern contains spaces, you must enclose it in
double quotes (").
-sequence name
Specifies a sequence in which places the messages found. For
more information on sequences, see The name of the sequence
must begin with a letter, and must consist entirely of alpha‐
betic or numeric characters; no punctuation is allowed.
-subject pattern
Searches for the specified pattern in the Subject: field of
messages. This option is case-insensitive: lower- and upper-
case letters are treated as identical. So a search for the
pattern phillips would also find Phillips and PHILLIPS. If
the pattern contains spaces, you must enclose it in double
quotes (").
-to pattern
Searches for the specified pattern in the To: field of mes‐
sages. This option is case-insensitive: lower- and upper-
case letters are treated as identical. So a search for the
pattern phillips would also find Phillips and PHILLIPS. If
the pattern contains spaces, you must enclose it in double
quotes (").
-zero
-nozero Specifies whether to zero existing sequences before adding
new messages. Normally, removes all existing messages from a
sequence before adding messages to it. If you specify the
-nozero option, will add the messages it finds to the exist‐
ing contents of the sequence. This option only works with
the -sequence option.
--component pattern
Searches a specified header field. If you wish to search for
a pattern in a particular header field, you can specify the
field by placing two dashes (-) before the name of the field.
This option is case-insensitive: lower- and upper-case let‐
ters are treated as identical. So a search for the pattern
phillips would also find Phillips and PHILLIPS. If the pat‐
tern contains spaces, you must enclose it in double quotes
(").
The command recognizes the following common header fields:
To:, cc:, Date:, From:, and Subject:. You can search these
fields by preceding the name with one dash only.
In addition to the above options, you can direct to start its search a
specified number of days ago. To do this, precede the number of days
with a dash (-). For example, the following command searches all mes‐
sages sent in the last ten days:
% pick-subject strawberries -10
1
6
The command also supports complex boolean operations. The -not, -or
and -and options allow you to modify the behavior of pattern-matching
options. In the following command, the -not option means that searches
for messages that were not from fred:
% pick-not -from fred
In the next example, the -or option finds all messages from fred or
from david. If the -or option is not used, searches for messages with
both the string fred and the string david in the From: field.
% pick-from fred -or -from david
The pattern-matching options normally take precedence over -not, which
in turn takes precedence over -and, which in turn takes precedence over
-or.
You can override the default precedence with the -lbrace and -rbrace
options. These act just like opening and closing parentheses in logi‐
cal expressions.
Restrictions
The sequence name, punctuation and message list must not exceed 1024
characters. In practice, this gives a reasonable limit of approxi‐
mately 200 non-consecutive messages in a sequence.
Examples
The first example finds all the mail in the current folder that was
sent by Christine:
% pick-from christine
1
3
8
In the next example, searches messages 10-20 in the folder for messages
that were sent to Kafka:
% pick +sent 10-20 -to Kafka
pick: no messages match specification
The next example finds all messages from Jack, and places them in a
sequence called testing:
% pick-from Jack -sequence testing
3 hits
The final example finds all messages sent to Holloway since 10th June:
% pick-to holloway -after "10 Jun 90"
19
Profile Components
Path: To determine your Mail directory
Files
The user profile.
See Alsocsh(1), ed(1), grep(1), sh(1), inc(1mh), mark(1mh)pick(1mh)
