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NAME

       mairixrc - configuration file for mairix(1)

SYNOPSIS

       $HOME/.mairixrc

DESCRIPTION

       The mairixrc file tells mairix where your mail folders are located.  It
       also tells mairix where the results of searches are to be written.

       mairix searches for this file at $HOME/.mairixrc unless the  -f  option
       is used.

       The  directives  base,  mfolder, and database must always appear in the
       file.  There must also be some folder definitions (using  the  maildir,
       mh, or mbox) directives.

   Comments
       Any line starting with a ’#’ character is treated as a comment.

   Directives
       base=base-directory
              This defines the path to the common parent directory of all your
              maildir folders.

              If the path is relative,  it  is  treated  as  relative  to  the
              location of the mairixrc file.

       maildir=list-of-folder-specifications
              This  is a colon-separated list of the Maildir folders (relative
              to ‘base’) that you want indexed.  Any entry that ends ‘...’  is
              recursively scanned to find any Maildir folders underneath it.

              More  than one line starting with ‘maildir’ can be included.  In
              this case, mairix joins the lines together with colons as though
              a  single  list  of folders had been given on a single very long
              line.

              Each  colon-separated  entry  may  be  a  wildcard.    See   the
              discussion  under  mbox  (below)  for  the wildcard syntax.  For
              example

                   maildir=zzz/foo*...

              will match maildir folders like these  (relative  to  the  base-
              directory)

                   zzz/foobar/xyz
                   zzz/fooquux
                   zzz/foo
                   zzz/fooabc/u/v/w

               and

                   maildir=zzz/foo[abc]*

              will   match   maildir  folders  like  these  (relative  to  the
              folder_base)

                   zzz/fooa
                   zzz/fooaaaxyz
                   zzz/foobcd
                   zzz/fooccccccc

              If a folder name contains a colon, you can write this  by  using
              the sequence ’\:’ to escape the colon.  Otherwise, the backslash
              character is treated normally.  (If  the  folder  name  actually
              contains the sequence ’\:’, you’re out of luck.)

       mh=list-of-folder-specifications
              This  is  a  colon-separated list of the MH folders (relative to
              recursively scanned to find any MH folders underneath it.

              More than one line starting with ’mh’ can be included.  In  this
              case,  mairix  joins  the lines together with colons as though a
              single list of folders had been given  on  a  single  very  long
              line.

              Each colon-separated entry may be a wildcard, see the discussion
              under maildir (above)  and  mbox  (below)  for  the  syntax  and
              semantics of specifying wildcards.

              recognizes  the  types  of  MH  folders created by the following
              email applications:

              *      xmh

              *      sylpheed

              *      evolution

              *      NNML

              *      Mew

       mbox=list-of-folder-specifications
              This is a colon-separated list of the mbox folders (relative to

              Each colon-separated item in the list can be suffixed by  ’...’.
              If  the  item  matches a regular file, that file is treated as a
              mbox folder and the  ’...’  suffix  is  ignored.   If  the  item
              matches  a directory, a recursive scan of everything inside that
              directory  is  made,  and  all  regular  files   are   initially
              considered as mbox folders.  (Any directories found in this scan
              are themselves scanned, since the scan is recursive.)

              Each colon-separated item may contain  wildcard  operators,  but
              only  in  its  final  path  component.   The  wildcard operators
              currently supported are

       *
              Match  zero  or  more  characters  (each  character  matched  is
              arbitrary)

       ?
              Match exactly one arbitrary character

       [abcs-z]
              Character class : match a single character from the set a, b, c,
              s, t, u, v, w, x, y and z.

              To include a literal ’]’ in  the  class,  place  it  immediately
              after  the  opening ’[’.  To include a literal ’-’ in the class,
              place it immediately before the closing ’]’.

              If  these  metacharacters  are  included   in   non-final   path
              components, they have no special meaning.

              Here are some examples

       mbox=foo/bar*
              matches ’foo/bar’, ’foo/bar1’, ’foo/barrrr’ etc

       mbox=foo*/bar*
              matches ’foo*/bar’, ’foo*/bar1’, ’foo*/barrrr’ etc

       mbox=foo/*
              matches  ’foo/bar’, ’foo/bar1’, ’foo/barrrr’, ’foo/foo’, ´foo/x’
              etc

       mbox=foo...
              matches any regular file in the tree rooted at ’foo’

       mbox=foo/*...
              same as before

       mbox=foo/[a-z]*...
              matches    ’foo/a’,    ’foo/aardvark/xxx’,     ’foo/zzz/foobar’,
              ´foo/w/x/y/zzz’, but not ’foo/A/foobar’

              Regular  files  that  are  mbox  folder  candidates are examined
              internally.   Only  files  containing  standard  mbox  ’From   ’
              separator lines will be scanned for messages.

              If  a  regular file has a name ending in ’.gz’, and gzip support
              is compiled into the mairix binary, the file will be treated  as
              a gzipped mbox.

              If  a regular file has a name ending in ’.bz2’, and bzip support
              is compiled into the mairix binary, the file will be treated  as
              a bzip2’d mbox.

              More  than  one  line  starting with ’mbox’ can be included.  In
              this case, mairix joins the lines together with colons as though
              a  single  list  of folders had been given on a single very long
              line.

              mairix performs no locking of mbox folders when it is  accessing
              them.   If  a mail delivery program is modifying the mbox at the
              same time, it is likely that one or messages in  the  mbox  will
              never  get  indexed by mairix (until the database is removed and
              recreated from scratch, anyway.)  The assumption is that  mairix
              will be used to index archive folders rather than incoming ones,
              so this is unlikely to be much of a problem in reality.

              mairix can support a maximum of 65536  separate  mboxes,  and  a
              maximum of 65536 messages within any one mbox.

       omit=list-of-glob-patterns
              This  is  a colon-separated list of glob patterns for folders to
              be omitted from the indexing.  This allows  wide  wildcards  and
              recursive  elements  to  be  used  in  the  maildir,mh,  andmbox
              directives, with the omit  option  used  to  selectively  remove
              unwanted folders from the folder lists.

              Within  the  glob patterns, a single ’*’ matches any sequence of
              characters other than ’/’.  However ’**’ matches any sequence of
              characters  including  ’/’.   This  allows  glob  patterns to be
              constructed  which  have  a  wildcard  for  just  one  directory
              component, or for any number of directory components.

              The  _omit_ option can be specified as many times as required so
              that the list of patterns doesn’t all have to fit on one line.

              As an example,

                   mbox=bulk...
                   omit=bulk/spam*

              will index all mbox  folders  at  any  level  under  the  ’bulk’
              subdirectory  of the base folder, except for those folders whose
              names start ’bulk/spam’, e.g. ’bulk/spam’, ’bulk/spam2005’  etc.

              In constrast,

                   mbox=bulk...
                   omit=bulk/spam**

              will  index  all  mbox  folders  at  any  level under the ’bulk’
              subdirectory of the base folder, except for those folders  whose
              names  start  ’bulk/spam’,  e.g.  ’bulk/spam’,  ’bulk/spam2005’,
              ´bulk/spam/2005’, ’bulk/spam/2005/jan’ etc.

       nochecks
              This takes no arguments.  If a line starting  with  nochecks  is
              present, it is the equivalent of specifying the -Q flag to every
              indexing run.

       mfolder=match-folder-name
              This defines the  name  of  the  folder  (within  the  directory
              specified by base) into which the search mode writes its output.
              (If the mformat used is ’raw’ or ’excerpt’, then this setting is
              not used and may be omitted.)

              The  mfolder  setting may be over-ridden for a particular search
              by using the -o option to mairix.

              mairix will refuse to output search results  to  a  folder  that
              appears  to  be  amongst  those  that  are  indexed.  This is to
              prevent accidental deletion of emails.

              If the first character of the mfolder value is ’/’ or ’.’, it is
              taken  as  a  pathname  in  its  own  right.  This allows you to
              specify  absolute  paths  and  paths  relative  to  the  current
              directory  where  the mfolder should be written.  Otherwise, the
              value of mfolder is appended to the value of base, in  the  same
              way as for the source folders.

       mformat=format
              This  defines the type of folder used for the match folder where
              the search results  go.   There  are  four  valid  settings  for
              format,  namely ’maildir’, ’mh’, ’mbox’, ’raw’ or ’excerpt’.  If
              the ’raw’ setting is used then mairix will just  print  out  the
              path  names  of the files that match and no match folder will be
              created.  If the ’excerpt’ setting is  used,  mairix  will  also
              print out the To:, Cc:, From:, Subject: and Date: headers of the
              matching messages.  ’maildir’ is the default if this  option  is
              not defined.  The setting is case-insensitive.

       database=path-to-database
              This  defines  the  path  where mairix’s index database is kept.
              You can keep this file anywhere you like.

              Currently, mairix will place  a  single  database  file  at  the
              location  indicated  by  path-to-database.   However,  a  future
              version of mairix  may  instead  place  a  directory  containing
              several files at this location.

              path-to-database  should  be an absolute pathname (starting with
              ’/’).  If a relative pathname is used, it  will  be  interpreted
              relative  to  the  current  directory at the time mairix is run,
              (not relative to the location of the mairixrc file  or  anything
              like that.)

   Expansions
       The  part  of  each  line  in ’.mairixrc’ following the equals sign can
       contain the following types of expansion:

       Home directory expansion
              If the sequence ’~/’ appears at the start of the text after  the
              equals  sign,  it  is  expanded  to  the  user’s home directory.
              Example:

                   database=~/Mail/mairix_database

       Environment expansion
              If a ’$’ is followed by a sequence of  alpha-numeric  characters
              (or  ´_’),  the  whole  string  is  replaced  by  looking up the
              corresponding  environment  variable.   Similarly,  if  ’$’   is
              followed by an open brace (’{’), everything up to the next close
              brace is looked up as an environment  variable  and  the  result
              replaces the entire sequence.

              Suppose in the shell we do

                   export FOO=bar

              and the ’.mairixrc’ file contains

                   maildir=xxx/$FOO
                   mbox=yyy/a${FOO}b

              this is equivalent to

                   maildir=xxx/bar
                   mbox=yyy/abarb

              If   the   specified   environment  variable  is  not  set,  the
              replacement is the empty string.

NOTES

       An alternative path to the configuration file may be given with the  -f
       option to mairix(1).

                                 January 2006