8.2 Sorting

To make selection by sorting messages, use ‘S’. Then you will be asked to input the field name as follows:

Sort by? (default date): 

There are some cases where strings stored in the specified field should not be compared as text. For example, while Subject: can be considered as text, Date: and X-Mail-Count: should be treated as date and number, respectively. In this way, we call the distinctions in methods of string sorting "modes". Default modes for typical field names are configured in ‘mew-sort-key-alist’.

When you want to specify the mode of sorting, the mode is followed by ‘:’. For example, to sort with the X-Mail-Count: field as arithmetic value (not text), input like this:

x-mail-count:num

You can complete field names and modes with ‘TAB’.

Mew provides four modes for sorting:

‘text’

String with preceding "Re: " and or "Fw: " removed.

‘ml’

The same as text but preceding mailing-list-string removed.

‘num’

Number.

‘date’

Date.

The default field name, your response to the prompt "Sort by?", can be specified in ‘mew-sort-default-key’. The following example changes the default value from "date" to "x-ml-count".

(setq mew-sort-default-key "x-ml-count")

You can also set a default field name for each folder by ‘mew-sort-default-key-alist’. For folders not explicitly specified here, ‘mew-sort-default-key’ is used for their default field name. The following is an example that specifies "subject" for the +inbox folder and "x-mail-count" for the +mew-dist folder.

(setq mew-sort-default-key-alist
      '(("+inbox" "subject")
        ("+mew-dist" "x-mail-count")))

To really sort messages in a local folder, use ‘M-s’. This command is not available in remote folders.

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