Re: finding incoming messages in threads in which i've participated [was: Re: find threads where I and Jian participated but not Dave]

[Matt Armstrong <marmstrong@google.com>]

Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net> writes:

> Hey all--
>
> I really appreciate the thought and experimentation and research that's
> gone into this thread!
>
> On Thu 2017-06-22 17:00:58 -0700, Matt Armstrong wrote:
>> # All threads in which I participate get tag:participated
>> #  1) Find all threads with a message tagged new
>> #     (finding all 'today' messages helps during testing,
>> #     but isn't necessary)
>> #  2) Run through "xargs -s 2048 echo" to to group threads
>> #     lines of about 2K in size.
>> #  3) For each line (2) produces, narrow the threads to
>> #     those containing a message from me.
>> #  4) For each such thread, tag every message with +participated.
>> notmuch search --output=threads tag:new OR date:today | \
>>   xargs -s 2048 echo | \
>>   xargs -I '{}' notmuch search \
>>   --output=threads from:marmstrong AND \( '{}' \) | \
>>   sed -e 's,^,+participated -- ,' | \
>>   notmuch tag --batch
>
> This makes sense to me, modulo the split into 2048-octet lines (magic
> numbers make me nervous, though i think i understand why you've included
> it).

Yes, the two xargs commands and "2048 business" is just a hack to work
around the documented limitations of "xargs -I".  I'd love to come up
with a simpler way to do this.  I suspect there is one, but when it
comes to this kind of Unix shell hackery, I usually stop once I get to
something that works.  :)