.TH NOTMUCH-TAG 1 2012-08-20 "Notmuch 0.14"
.SH NAME
notmuch-tag \- add/remove tags for all messages matching the search terms

.SH SYNOPSIS
.B notmuch tag
.RI "+<" tag ">|\-<" tag "> [...] [\-\-] <" search-term "> [...]"

.B notmuch tag
.RI "--batch"
.RI "[ --input=<" filename "> ]"


.SH DESCRIPTION

Add/remove tags for all messages matching the search terms.

See \fBnotmuch-search-terms\fR(7)
for details of the supported syntax for
.RI < search-term >.

Tags prefixed by '+' are added while those prefixed by '\-' are
removed. For each message, tag removal is performed before tag
addition.

The beginning of the search terms is recognized by the first
argument that begins with neither '+' nor '\-'. Support for
an initial search term beginning with '+' or '\-' is provided
by allowing the user to specify a "\-\-" argument to separate
the tags from the search terms.

.B "notmuch tag"
updates the maildir flags according to tag changes if the
.B "maildir.synchronize_flags"
configuration option is enabled. See \fBnotmuch-config\fR(1) for
details.

Supported options for
.B tag
include
.RS 4
.TP 4
.BR \-\-batch

Read batch tagging operations from a file (stdin by default). This is more
efficient than repeated
.B notmuch tag
invocations. See
.B TAG FILE FORMAT
below for the input format. This option is not compatible with
specifying tagging on the command line.
.RE

.RS 4
.TP 4
.BR "\-\-input=" <filename>

Read input from given file, instead of from stdin. Implies
.BR --batch .

.SH TAG FILE FORMAT

The input must consist of lines of the format:

.RI "+<" tag ">|\-<" tag "> [...] [\-\-] <" search-term "> [...]"

Each line is interpreted similarly to
.B notmuch tag
command line arguments. The delimiter is one or more spaces ' '. Any
characters in
.RI < tag >
and
.RI < search-term >
.B may
be hex-encoded with %NN where NN is the hexadecimal value of the
character. To hex-encode a character with a multi-byte UTF-8 encoding,
hex-encode each byte.
Any spaces in <tag> and <search-term>
.B must
be hex-encoded as %20.  The ':' indicating a prefix like 'id:' or 'tag:',
the '*' wildcard for all messages, and any characters that are not
part of
.RI  < tag >
or
.RI < search-term >
.B must not
be hex-encoded.  In particular parentheses used to bracket
sub-expressions must not be encoded.

Leading and trailing space ' ' is ignored. Empty lines and lines
beginning with '#' are ignored.

.SS EXAMPLE

The following shows a valid input to batch tagging. Note that only the
isolated '*' acts as a wildcard.

.RS
.nf
+winner *
+foo::bar -- (One and Two) or (One and tag:winner)
+found::it -- tag:foo::bar
# ignore this line and the next

+space%20in%20tags -- Two
# hex encode tag '(tags)', among other stunts.
+crazy{ +%28tags%29 +&are +#possible\ -- tag:space%20in%20tags
+match*crazy -- tag:crazy{
.fi
.RE

.SH SEE ALSO

\fBnotmuch\fR(1), \fBnotmuch-config\fR(1), \fBnotmuch-count\fR(1),
\fBnotmuch-dump\fR(1), \fBnotmuch-hooks\fR(5), \fBnotmuch-new\fR(1),
\fBnotmuch-reply\fR(1), \fBnotmuch-restore\fR(1),
\fBnotmuch-search\fR(1), \fBnotmuch-search-terms\fR(7),
\fBnotmuch-show\fR(1),