[Alpine-info] Search problem

[Carlos E. R. via Alpine-info]

On 2024-07-27 15:05, Olaf Skibbe via Alpine-info wrote:

> 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?


It is suggestive of a problem I have with search and select (based on 
headers) on a gmx.es account. Search results using the server are wrong 
(using a different software, not alpine). I found that I had to tell 
this software to repeat the search on the downloaded data, instead of 
asking the server. This is, of course, slow.

I had problems with alpine, which I bypass using a different .pinerc 
profile:

"Gmx"  {imap.gmx.com/tls/user=robin.listas at gmx.es}INBOX,

"F Gmx"  {imap.gmx.com/tls/user=robin.listas at gmx.es/loser}INBOX,


This forces filtering to use the same trick and do the filtering in 
local RAM. Alpine is substantially slower with this method, but it works.

I got this trick from Eduardo Chappa, thread:

   Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2023 11:48:01 +0200 (CEST)
   From: Carlos E. R. <robin.listas at telefonica.net>
   To: Alpine info <alpine-info at u.washington.edu>
   Subject: [Alpine-info] Sudenly, a rule doesn't work.



-- 
Cheers / Saludos,

		Carlos E. R.
		(from 15.5 x86_64 at Telcontar)

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