[Alpine-info] Search problem

[Olaf Skibbe via Alpine-info]

Hi all,

I have a problem concerning the "select" function of alpine.

I use the web hoster Strato for e-mail. Since recently, I see the
following behavior:

I am in the INBOX of the account and want to select all mails from a
certain sender. I do

; T F <search pattern>

where <search pattern> is in this case something in the "From" header,
e.g.

; T F olaf

should find mails with a line like this in the header:

From: Olaf Skibbe <olaf at kravcenko.com>

But actually, the result of the sequence "; T F <search pattern>" is
always empty, regardless of obvious matching mails.

I can select the messages with <search pattern> in the "From:" header
by searching for participants:

; T P <search pattern>.

But obviously, this selects also mails with <search pattern> in other
header fields.

I can select the messages if I store them locally and do

; T F <search pattern>

within the local folder. It also works as expected if I copy the mail
to the INBOX of another account (at a different hoster).

And last but not least, I find the messages in the INBOX using
Thunderbird and search in the "From:" header.

It seems as if searching the "From:" header on the mail server does
not work, but searching participants evaluates the "From:" header
regardless. All other text select methods (all that starts with "; T")
seem to work fine.

I suspect that this is not an alpine issue but something going wrong
at the mail server at Strato.

I would appreciate hints to how I could maybe get around this issue (I
use the select functions very much, dozens of times every day for many
years) or how I can evaluate the problem in more detail to address the
people at Strato with it.

Any hints or ideas?

Kind regards,
Olaf