Hi;

I have read the mutt manual and googled for a couple of hours now. What I want to do is simple. I am sure that I am just mis-forming my mutt command, but damned if I know how. I've tried everything I can think of.

1) I want to delete every message in mutt lesser than a given date. The following and all its variations seem logical to me:

'D' [then] '-d <Mar 12' -- but nothing happens

2) Each message has a consequitive number on the left hand side. I would think I could use this number to identify a specific message in a command. But, how?

"Mutt supports two types of dates, absolute and relative.

Absolute. Dates must be in DD/MM/YY format (month and year are optional, defaulting to the current month and year). An example of a valid range of dates is:

Limit to messages matching: ~d 20/1/95-31/10

If you omit the minimum (first) date, and just specify ``-DD/MM/YY'', all messages before the given date will be selected. If you omit the maximum (second) date, and specify ``DD/MM/YY-'', all messages after the given date will be selected. If you specify a single date with no dash (``-''), only messages sent on the given date will be selected."

http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/manual-4.html#ss4.2

You want this:

D [then] ~d -12/03

NOTE: use ~d not -d. The use of < to delete is relative to the current date.