apache / apache/ponymail-foal

Negative search does not work for headers

Open
#334 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Dominant language
Python
Stars
45
Forks
23
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

A search for `Subject: -keyword` returns the same results as a search for `Subject: keyword`, i.e. the negation indicator is ignored.

The same applies to search for other headers: `Author`, `To`, `Body`

A search for `Message-id` does an exact match (including any leading `-`) - this is OK, as a positive match will in general only match a few messages; negating such a match is not particularly useful.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

No file or test is named. Start by locating the search parser and header-matching logic, then reproduce `Subject: -keyword` alongside the positive query for Subject, Author, To, and Body. Done means negative header searches exclude matching messages while Message-id matching, including leading `-`, remains unchanged, with regression tests for these cases.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
search
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
65/100

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