Search in mutt by date and time

search and limit can also actually search inside messages, depending on the search patterns you give. From the Patterns subsection of the Mutt reference:

~b EXPR         messages which contain EXPR in the message body
=b STRING       If IMAP is enabled, like ~b but searches for STRING on the server, rather than downloading each message and searching it locally.
~B EXPR         messages which contain EXPR in the whole message
=B STRING       If IMAP is enabled, like ~B but searches for STRING on the server, rather than downloading each message and searching it locally.

That is, ~b only searches in the body, whereas ~B also searches in the headers.

Note that this can be quite slow, since it may have to download each message one by one if they are not already cached. If you have a mutt version greater or equal to 1.5.12, you can cache the ones you are downloading for later use by setting message_cachedir to a directory where you want to store message bodies, which can significantly speed up searching them (and the same for headers with header_cache).

If you are using the "development" version of mutt (v1.5+) - and you absolutely should - there is the possibility to use an external filter as described in the manual.

First you need a script that can output different things according to the age of a message. Here is an example in Python:

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""mutt format date

Prints different index_format strings for mutt according to a
messages age.

The single command line argument should be a unix timestamp
giving the message's date (%{}, etc. in Mutt).
"""

import sys
from datetime import datetime

INDEX_FORMAT = "%Z {} %?X?(%X)&   ? %-22.22F  %.100s %> %5c%"

def age_fmt(msg_date, now):
    # use iso date for messages of the previous year and before
    if msg_date.date().year < now.date().year:
        return '%[%Y-%m-%d]'

    # use "Month Day" for messages of this year
    if msg_date.date() < now.date():
        return '%10[%b %e]'

    # if a message appears to come from the future
    if msg_date > now:
        return '  b0rken'

    # use only the time for messages that arrived today
    return '%10[%H:%m]'

if __name__ == '__main__':
    msg_date = datetime.fromtimestamp(int(sys.argv[1]))
    now = datetime.now()
    print INDEX_FORMAT.format(age_fmt(msg_date, now))

Save this as mutt-fmt-date somewhere on your PATH.

Two things are important here:

• The format string has to contain one occurance of {} which is replaced with the return value of age_fmt() by Python.
• The format string has to end with a % so that Mutt will interpret it.

Then you can use it in your .muttrc as follows:

set index_format="mutt-fmt-date %[%s] |"

Mutt will then

1. interpret %[%s] according to the rules for format strings.
2. call mutt-fmt-date with the result of 1. as argument (because of the | at the end).
3. interpret what it gets back from the script as format string again (because of the % at the end).

Caveat: the script will be executed for every message that is to be about be displayed. The resulting delay can be quite noticable when scrolling through a mailbox.

Here is a version in C that performs somewhat adequately:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>

#define DAY (time_t)86400
#define YEAR (time_t)31556926

int main(int argc, const char *argv[]) {
    time_t current_time;
    time_t message_time;

    const char *old, *recent, *today;
    const char *format;

    current_time = time(NULL);

    if (argc!=6) {
        printf("Usage: %s old recent today format timestamp\n", argv[0]);
        return 2;
    }

    old = argv[1];
    recent = argv[2];
    today = argv[3];

    format = argv[4];

    message_time = atoi(argv[5]);

    if ((message_time/YEAR) < (current_time/YEAR)) {
        printf(format, old);
    } else if ((message_time/DAY) < (current_time/DAY)) {
        printf(format, recent);
    } else {
        printf(format, today);
    }

    return 0;
}

This goes together with the muttrc line:

set index_format='mfdate "%[%d.%m.%y]" "%8[%e. %b]" "%8[%H:%m]" "%Z %%s %-20.20L %?y?[%-5.5y]&       ? %?M?+& ?%s%%" "%[%s]" |'