mmsg7

Overview

This document outlines the message syntax used by many of the utilities in the mblaze(7) message system.

In general, you can always specify a filename as a message, if it contains a ‘/’ character.( Use ‘./’ to prefix messages in the current directory.) You can also specify a maildir folder, which will be expanded to all messages in the cur/ directory.

Ranges have the format ‘start:stop’, where start and stop are one-based indexes into the sequence. Negative numbers count from the end. If start is the empty string, 1 will be used instead. If stop is the empty string, -1 will be used instead. Thus, ‘:’ represents the whole sequence. If the range does not contain a ‘:’, it is considered to be a single message, equivalent to the range ‘start:start’ of size one. The special notation ‘start:+n’, selects start and the next n messages.

If the sequence is threaded, the following syntax may be used: ‘msg=’ refers to the whole thread that contains msg. ‘msg^’ refers to the parent of the message msg and may be repeated to refer to grandparents. ‘msg_’ refers to the subthread headed by msg( i.e. all messages below msg, with more indentation).

The following special shortcuts may be used:

‘-’

refers to the message read directly from the standard input.

‘.’

refers to the current message. Additionally, the syntax ‘.+N’ and ‘.-N’ can be used to refer to messages relative to the current message.

‘+’

refers to the next message( like ‘.+1’)

‘.-’

refers to the previous message( like ‘.-1’)

‘$’

refers to the last message( like ‘-1’)

‘^’

refers to the current parent message( like ‘.^’)

‘=’

refers to the current thread( like ‘.=’)

‘_’

refers to the current subthread( like ‘._’)