mmsg
—
mblaze message argument syntax
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
‘
._
’)