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Re: sorting messages by thread

2002-09-11 09:44:55
Jerry Peek wrote:
MH/nmh messages are stored in files, one message per file... so it's reasonably simple to write programs that rearrange the messages in whatever order you want.

Two more maybe-obvious tips:

If you want to sort a folder that already exists -- without using links to a new folder -- you can refile _into the current folder_, past the last message. For instance, if the current folder has 479 messages, a command like this:

refile 1 10 12 @.

will make message 1 into message 480, message 10 into message 481, and message 12 into message 482. The "@." is a relative folder pathname that stands for "the current folder," no matter what its name is.

Another tip, for whatever it's worth: there are a few ways to search/sort/whatever all un-refiled messages. One way is to make a sequence with the source messages, like this:

mark -add -zero -sequence source all

Then, as you continue to reorder messages, the sequence named "source" will hold only the un-moved messages.

You also can use ranges like first-487 to match all messages between the first remaining message and message 487 (which was the last message in the original folder, as I mentioned above). For instance:

pick source --in-reply-to '<message-id>' ...
or
sortm -textfield ... first-487

Jerry
--
Jerry Peek, jpeek(_at_)jpeek(_dot_)com, http://www.jpeek.com/


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