Message search terms for the JavaMail API. This package defines classes that can be used to construct a search expression to search a folder for messages matching the expression; see the {@link javax.mail.Folder#search search} method on {@link javax.mail.Folder javax.mail.Folder}. See {@link javax.mail.search.SearchTerm SearchTerm}.

Note that the exact search capabilities depend on the protocol, provider, and server in use. For the POP3 protocol, all searching is done on the client side using the JavaMail classes. For IMAP, all searching is done on the server side and is limited by the search capabilities of the IMAP protocol and the IMAP server being used. For example, IMAP date based searches have only day granularity.

In general, all of the string patterns supported by search terms are just simple strings; no regular expressions are supported.