FreeBSD Manual Pages
MU EXTRACT(1) General Commands Manual MU EXTRACT(1) NAME mu-extract - display and save message parts (attachments), and open them with other tools. SYNOPSIS mu [COMMON-OPTIONS] extract [OPTIONS] [FILE] mu [COMMON-OPTIONS] extract [OPTIONS] FILE PATTERN DESCRIPTION mu extract is the mu sub-command for extracting MIME-parts (e.g., at- tachments) from mail messages. The sub-command works on message files, and does not require the message to be indexed in the database. For attachments, the file name used when saving it is the name of the attachment in the message. If there is no such name, or when saving non-attachment MIME-parts, a name is derived from the message-id of the message. If you specify a regular express pattern as the second argument, all attachments with filenames matching that pattern will be extracted. The regular expressions are basic PCRE, and are case-sensitive by default; see pcre(3) for more details. Without any options, mu extract simply outputs the list of leaf MIME- parts in the message. Only `leaf' MIME-parts (including RFC822 attach- ments) are considered, multipart/* etc. are ignored. Without a filename parameter, mu extract reads a message from standard- input. In that case, you cannot use the second, PATTERN parameter as this would be ambiguous; instead, use the --matches option. EXTRACT OPTIONS -a, --save-attachments Save all MIME-parts that look like attachments. --save-all Save all non-multipart MIME-parts. --parts parts Only consider the following numbered parts (comma-separated list). The numbers for the parts can be seen from running mu extract without any options but only the message file. --target-dir dir Save the parts in dir rather than the current working directory. --overwrite Overwrite existing files with the same name; by default overwriting is not allowed. -u,--uncooked By default, mu transforms the attachment filenames a bit (such as by replacing spaces by dashes); with this option, leave that to the mini- mum for creating a legal filename in the target directory. --matches pattern Attachments with filenames matching pattern will be extracted. The reg- ular expressions are basic PCRE, and are case-sensitive by default; see pcre(3) for more details. --play Try to `play' (open) the attachment with the default application for the particular file type. On MacOS, this uses the open program, on other platforms it uses xdg-open. You can choose a different program by setting the MU_PLAY_PROGRAM environment variable. COMMON OPTIONS -d, --debug Makes mu generate extra debug information, useful for debugging the program itself. Debug information goes to the standard logging loca- tion; see mu(1). -q, --quiet Causes mu not to output informational messages and progress information to standard output, but only to the log file. Error messages will still be sent to standard error. Note that mu index is much faster with --quiet, so it is recommended you use this option when using mu from scripts etc. --log-stderr Causes mu to not output log messages to standard error, in addition to sending them to the standard logging location. --nocolor Do not use ANSI colors. The environment variable NO_COLOR can be used as an alternative to --nocolor. -V, --version Prints mu version and copyright information. -h, --help Lists the various command line options. EXAMPLES To display information about all the MIME-parts in a message file: $ mu extract msgfile To extract MIME-part 3 and 4 from this message, overwriting existing files with the same name: $ mu extract --parts=3,4 --overwrite msgfile To extract all files ending in `.jpg' (case-insensitive): $ mu extract msgfile '.*\.jpg' To extract an mp3-file, and play it in the default mp3-playing applica- tion: $ mu extract --play msgfile 'whoopsididitagain.mp3' when reading from standard-input, you need --matches, so: $ cat msgfile | mu extract --play --matches 'whoopsididitagain.mp3' REPORTING BUGS Please report bugs at https://github.com/djcb/mu/issues. AUTHOR Dirk-Jan C. Binnema <djcb@djcbsoftware.nl> COPYRIGHT This manpage is part of mu 1.12.15. Copyright 2008-2026 Dirk-Jan C. Binnema. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL ver- sion 3 or later https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html. This is free soft- ware: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. SEE ALSO mu(1) MU EXTRACT(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | EXTRACT OPTIONS | COMMON OPTIONS | EXAMPLES | REPORTING BUGS | AUTHOR | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO
Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=mu-extract&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+15.0.quarterly>