How to invoke the limit function from cli

[Jim O]

I want to invoke mutt and have it show me, in the index,
just the mails matching a regex. I can do this by entering
klower-case l from the index, and typing in the regex then,
thereby invoking that limit function. But all my efforts
to do something like:

mutt -e 'exec limit ~h foo' ~f mailbox

result in complaints of non-existent functions, despite a pretty
exhaustive suite of quotation variations, putting the function
invocation in a special rc file, throwing "foo" at mutt's stdin,
ad nauseam. The docs imply the limit function is only available
in the index menu, so I suppose the question is how to access that
menu from the initial invocation.

What's the trick?

TIA,

Jim

[Ian Zimmerman]

Post by Jim O
I want to invoke mutt and have it show me, in the index,
just the mails matching a regex. I can do this by entering
klower-case l from the index, and typing in the regex then,
thereby invoking that limit function. But all my efforts
mutt -e 'exec limit ~h foo' ~f mailbox
result in complaints of non-existent functions, despite a pretty
exhaustive suite of quotation variations, putting the function
invocation in a special rc file, throwing "foo" at mutt's stdin,
ad nauseam. The docs imply the limit function is only available
in the index menu, so I suppose the question is how to access that
menu from the initial invocation.
What's the trick?

Totally untested: maybe you can use the `push' command to stuff the
desired sequence into the input queue, and hope mutt is in the index
view by the time it starts reading input?