[ILUG] Filtering mail using mutt's score and limit commands.

[Kevin O'Riordan]

Hi all,

Mutt's scoring and limiting abilities can be used to change your view of
a mailbox.  It could be used as a sort of "killfile-lite".

Something like this could be done using procmail instead, but this'll do
me for the moment anyway.

Example muttrc lines:

    # Remove all scoring rules when entering any other mailbox.
    folder-hook     .       'unscore  *'

    # Assign a default score (5) to all messages.
    folder-hook     ilug    'score  "~A"                        +5'

    # Drop 1 point if subject includes the word 'spam'
    folder-hook     ilug    'score  "~s spam"                   -1'

    # Drop 2 points if mail was sent by someone.
    folder-hook     ilug    'score  "~f someone at somewhere.com"  -2'

    # Add 3 if mail was addressed to me.  ~C may be a better match.
    folder-hook     ilug    'score  "~p"                        +3'
    
    # Limit my view of the mailbox to messages that scored 5 or higher.
    folder-hook     ilug    'push  "l ~n 5-\n"'

While running mutt, if I wanted to view the mails that scored below 5 I
could type:

    l ~n -4

or

    l ~n 0-

to view all messages (0 is the lowest score mutt allows).

So if a thread doesn't make sense, due to the absence of some mail
you've filtered out, you can change your threshold.


There's a few muttrc options, such as 'hide_limited' and
'hide_top_limited', and some other patterns, such as ~Q, that might also
be of use; these sections of the mutt manual should be useful:

    http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/manual-3.html#ss3.22
    http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/manual.html#toc4

hth,
-KOR.


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