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Thunderbird search term syntax

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  • Last reply by Matt

BennyA
BennyA
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I want to search for a domain name (for example mit.dk) (it is in Denmark and is a valid web site). I have Thunderbird 102.6.1 (64-bit) on Windows 10. When I use Global Search it will return all mails with 'mit' and/or 'dk'. When I use Quick Filter search it will give me the mails with 'mit.dk' (in the body). I have tried to find an explanation of this. It seems Thunderbird operates with something called "search terms". Well, then I would expect that to be explained somewhere, but I haven't been able to find it. Can you help? I have been programming, and know the concept of regular expressions, maybe to advanced for the email user, but on the other hand, why does it not just accept if I put 'mit.dk' between quotes. Global Search treats 'mit' and 'dk' as separate words. I think this is wildly counter intuitive.

I want to search for a domain name (for example mit.dk) (it is in Denmark and is a valid web site). I have Thunderbird 102.6.1 (64-bit) on Windows 10. When I use Global Search it will return all mails with 'mit' and/or 'dk'. When I use Quick Filter search it will give me the mails with 'mit.dk' (in the body). I have tried to find an explanation of this. It seems Thunderbird operates with something called "search terms". Well, then I would expect that to be explained somewhere, but I haven't been able to find it. Can you help? I have been programming, and know the concept of regular expressions, maybe to advanced for the email user, but on the other hand, why does it not just accept if I put 'mit.dk' between quotes. Global Search treats 'mit' and 'dk' as separate words. I think this is wildly counter intuitive.
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Matt
Matt
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Personally I would welcome someone with the skills to determine exactly how search does it's thing writing a support document. Unfortunately that is not me.

But I have some insight.

The returned results are limited to 400. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=537856 The search will not search in encrypted mail. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=188988 There is no way to disable "stemming" so exact matching does not occur https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=752844 Plus a number of bugs linked to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=541349

In the context of the tokenizer. This bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=544580 which was raised by the original author of the global search indicates that the tokenizer stops at punctuation. so the domain name would not be available as it contains punctuation as searched.

Perhaps a look at the source may mean something to you as someone with programming experience. It means basically nothing to me at this level. https://searchfox.org/comm-central/source/mailnews/extensions/fts3/fts3_tokenizer.h