searching for quotes

ao1 · 26 Mar 2016, 02:41 AM

I am trying to search for "To" fields containing quotes.

For example, I want to find

Code:

"myname" <myname@example.tld>

But neither of:

Code:

myname <myname@example.tld>
<myname@example.tld>
myname@example.tld

the help says:

Quote:

If you want to search for a phrase with spaces in it, use quotes for the phrase part (either ' or ", but matched), e.g. from:"Joe Bloggs" or subject:'string with "double" quotes', but not from:Joe Bloggs or subject:"must end with same'. You can also use \", \' and \\ to match a literal ", ' and \ respectively in a phrase.

I tried the following search expression:

Code:

in:* to: '"myname" <myname@example.tld>'
in:* to: '\"myname\" <myname@example.tld>'
in:* to: "\"myname\" <myname@example.tld>"

but they all return heaps of false positives.

I also tried using substr() in all the combinations above which returned zero matches.

Please advise.

cyberpear · 7 Apr 2016, 04:15 PM

If you are trying to search and find names in the "to" header, but only names that have quotes around them, you will not be able to directly, as the quotes are stripped out by the search and only the parsed name and e-mail address are searched.

If you are trying to find a to that is of the form:

Quote:

Firstname "nickname" Lastname

, you can search that with the following:

Code:

imap:'to "Firstname \\"nickname\\" Lastname"'

If you REALLY want to find to headers that have quotes around the name, you can use the following, but be aware that it can be very resource-intensive on fastmail's servers:

Code:

imap:'TO myname@example.tld TEXT "\\"myname\\" <myname@example.tld>"'

Let me know if this helps!

Edit: this could also turn up false positives if the body of the e-mail has

Quote:

"myname" <myname@example.tld>

in it