Two perceived query language imbalances

Subject: Two perceived query language imbalances

Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 13:29:01 +0200

To: notmuch@notmuchmail.org

Cc:

From: Alexander Adolf


Dear notmuch developers,

Quoting from `man notmuch-search-terms`:

> from:<name-or-address> or from:/<regex>/
>        The from: prefix is used to match the name or address of the
>        sender of an email message.
> 
> to:<name-or-address>
>        The to: prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any
>        recipient of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).

Sorely missing to:/regex/ here. I was banging my head against this the
other day as I was searching for messages I had sent to various folks at
a specific organisation, but just couldn't remember whether their
addresses were "organisation.tld", or "organisationgroup.tld", or
"organisationlabs.tld", or similar. The workaround was to search for a
specific person's name, open a message, figure the email address scheme,
and then issue another search with that stem. "to:/regex/" would have
saved my day.

Any technical reason for "from" having a regex search, but "to" not?

> id:<message-id> or mid:<message-id> or mid:/<regex>/
>        For id: and mid:, message ID values are the literal contents of
>        the Message-ID: header of email messages, but without the '<',
>        '>' delimiters.

Similar thing here: "id:" and "mid:" can be used interchangeably, except
for regex search. Adding "id:/regex/" would seem most useful to me.


The query language should be the last thing to be getting in my way, I
think.


Many thanks in advance and looking forward to your thoughts,

  --alex
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