Re: Folder search semantics

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+From: Rob Browning <rlb@defaultvalue.org>\r
+To: Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU>\r
+Subject: Re: Folder search semantics\r
+References: <1295165458-9573-1-git-send-email-amdragon@mit.edu>\r
+       <20110202050336.GB28537@mit.edu> <87sjw6hx2l.fsf@yoom.home.cworth.org>\r
+       <20110203061429.GD28537@mit.edu>\r
+Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2011 13:52:40 -0600\r
+In-Reply-To: <20110203061429.GD28537@mit.edu> (Austin Clements's message of\r
+       "Thu, 3 Feb 2011 01:14:29 -0500")\r
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+\r
+Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU> writes:\r
+\r
+> As a consequence, all folders are subfolders of the inbox.  With\r
+> recursive search, a search for your inbox folder returns *all* of your\r
+> messages.  I wasn't trying to say that we shouldn't support recursive\r
+> search (I'm all for flexibility), but it's a confusing default for\r
+> Maildir++ because of this.\r
+>\r
+> Maildir++ has the added twist that the inbox folder has no name.  As a\r
+> result, currently notmuch can't search for a Maildir++ inbox folder,\r
+> which needs to be addressed somehow.  The least surprising approach\r
+> would compatibility with the Maildir++ convention of calling the\r
+> top-level folder INBOX, the subfolder INBOX.work, etc.\r
+\r
+Just adding my agreement here.  With recursion and no anchors, "folder:"\r
+really won't work for the inbox for Maildir++.\r
+\r
+> Maildir++ issues aside, I submit that rooted, non-recursive folder\r
+> searches are a more natural default with a more conventional syntactic\r
+> extension to non-rooted/recursive searches.  In\r
+> id:87aaiy3u65.fsf@yoom.home.cworth.org, you mentioned that you\r
+> implemented non-rooted folder search to mimic subject search.  But file\r
+> system paths are not natural language like subject lines.  File system\r
+> paths are hierarchical and rooted.\r
+>\r
+> Of course, special query operators like ^ and $ can mitigate this, but\r
+> these queries *aren't* regexps and, furthermore, people don't usually\r
+> apply regexps to file names.  They apply globs.  Glob syntax has the\r
+> added benefit of congruity with Xapian wildcard syntax.  This naturally\r
+> leads to a rooted, non-recursive syntax by default (like globs), where a\r
+> * at the end means recursive and a * at the beginning means non-rooted.\r
+> In fact, we could easily generalize this to arbitrary shell globs.\r
+\r
+I agree with all of this.  Something like fnmatch() sounds appropriate\r
+to me.  In fact, I'd suggest that we implement this very much like\r
+fnmatch() with folder references like paths -- where "/" is always the\r
+separator, regardless of how things are handled in the underlying\r
+storage.  So depending on the backend, foo/bar could refer to\r
+"Maildir/foo/bar" or "Maildir/.foo.bar".\r
+\r
+And personally, I think I'd prefer that folder: be anchored by default,\r
+so that folder:work means "the top-level folder named work", but it's\r
+not a big deal to me as long as there's a fairly easy way to specify\r
+exactly what I want.\r
+\r
+-- \r
+Rob Browning\r
+rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org\r
+GPG as of 2002-11-03 14DD 432F AE39 534D B592 F9A0 25C8 D377 8C7E 73A4\r