Re: [PATCH 1/2] Add 'cat' subcommand

Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] Add 'cat' subcommand

Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:44:03 -0700

To: Michal Sojka, Sebastian Spaeth

Cc: notmuch@notmuchmail.org

From: Carl Worth


On Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:14:56 +0200, Michal Sojka <sojkam1@fel.cvut.cz> wrote:
> On 20.4.2010 09:21, David Edmondson wrote:
>  > I'm puzzled why you chose to pass a filename as the argument to 'cat'
>  > rather than a message id (id:foo@bar.com)?
> 
> The reason is that I want be able to distinguish between several 
> messages with the same id.

All other commands currently accept the generic search terms to specify
messages, (even a command like "notmuch reply" for which it would have
been natural to accept only a single message).

So I'd prefer to have this command behave just like all others and use
the same naming.

The question of how to unambiguously refer to a single file is
orthogonal, (and similarly applies to all commands, such as "notmuch
tag" etc.). I would recommend supporting a search syntax something like:

	filename:/complete/path/to/file

for that use case. And this should work fine whether the filenames are
actual filenames or keys into some abstract file store of some sort.

What do you think?

-Carl
part-000.sig (application/pgp-signature)

Thread: