.\"
.TH PICK %manext1% "%nmhdate%" MH.6.8 [%nmhversion%]
.SH NAME
-pick \- search for messages by content
+pick \- select messages by content
.SH SYNOPSIS
.HP 5
.na
week are judged to refer to a day in the past (e.g., telling \fIpick\fR
`saturday' on a `tuesday' means `last\ saturday'
not `this\ saturday').
-.PP
+Further more, dates in a simplified ISO 8601/RFC 3339 style (e.g.
+`YYYY-MM-DD' or `YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss') are accepted.
Finally, in addition to these special specifications,
.B pick
will
-also honor a specification of the form `\-dd', which means
-`dd days ago'.
+also honor a date specification of the form `\-\fIddd\fR', which means
+`\fIddd\fR days ago'.
+For example,
+.PP
+.RS 5
+.nf
+pick\0\-after\0\-30
+.fi
+.RE
+.PP
+identifies the messages of the last thirty days.
.PP
.B Pick
supports complex boolean operations on the searching primitives
parentheses in logical expressions.
.PP
If no search criteria are given, all the messages specified on the
-command line are selected (this defaults to `all').
+command line are selected (this defaults to `a').
.PP
Once the search has been performed, if the
.B \-list
.B extremely
useful for
quickly generating arguments for other
-.B nmh
+.B mmh
programs by using the
`backquoting' syntax of the shell. For example, the command
.PP
.SH DEFAULTS
.nf
.RB ` +folder "' defaults to the current folder"
-.RB ` msgs "' defaults to all"
+.RB ` msgs "' defaults to all messages"
.RB ` "\-datefield date" '
.RB ` \-zero '
.RB ` \-list "' is the default if no `\-sequence', `\-nolist' otherwise"
something like:
.PP
.RS 5
-show\0`pick\0last:20\0\-seq\0fear`
+show\0`pick\0l:20\0\-seq\0fear`
.RE
.PP
instead of typing
.PP
.RS 5
.nf
-mark\0\-add\0\-nozero\0\-seq\0fear\0last:20
+mark\0\-add\0\-nozero\0\-seq\0fear\0l:20
show\0fear
.fi
.RE
backquoting
.B pick
is empty. In the case of
-.B nmh
+.B mmh
programs,
the outer command now acts as if the default `msg' or `msgs' should be
used (e.g., `all' in the case of
outputs the illegal message number `0'
when it fails. This lets the outer command fail gracefully as well.
.PP
+To account for this case when combining
+.B pick
+with regular shell tools, filter out the message number `0'.
+For example, do
+.PP
+.RS 5
+pick\0...\0|\0fgrep\0-vx\0\&0\0|\0wc\0-l
+.RE
+.PP
+to count the number of messages picked.
+.PP
The pattern syntax `[l-r]' is not supported; each letter to be
matched must be included within the square brackets.