1280840 - Trivial false negatives/positives with "Search Messages..." (Ctrl+Shift+F) on Body field with fully ASCII search terms

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1245532

(Thunderbird :: Search, defect)

Description

[Filipus Klutiero]

I have 2 mails in my [Gmail]/All Mail folder.
Test mail #1 starts with the following:
----------------------------------
Package: mysql-workbench
Version: 5.2.40+dfsg-1
Severity: wishlist

When creating a new server instance profile, MySQL Installation Type defaults to "Generic Linux (MySQL tar package)", even when the server is Debian. This type does not support MySQL installs from Debian packages. The "Debian" type does support Debian packages. It would be great if, when running MySQL workbench on Debian to setup a MySQL server on localhost, the MySQL installation type wouldn't have to be changed.
----------------------------------

Test saved search #1 has a single criterion, Body contains "mysql-workbench".
Test saved search #2 has a single criterion, Body contains "workbench".

The result list for search #1 is empty, unless Thunderbird is in online mode and Search Online is enabled, in which case test mail #1 shows.

The result list for search #2 contains test mail #1.



Test mail #2 is plain text only and has the following first line:
Saluti kara enciklopediisto, 

The mail later contains:
Ce n'était pas fait de la meilleure manière et peut-être risqué, mais je ne crois pas que la création de l'article William Gadoury était une bourde. 

Test saved search #3 has a single criterion, Body contains "enciklopediisto".
Test saved search #4 has a single criterion, Body contains "enciklopediisto," (that is, the comma is included).

The result list for search #3 contains 3 mails, but not test mail #2, unless Thunderbird is in online mode and Search Online is enabled, in which case several more mails are listed, which include test mail #2.

The result lists for search #4 are identical to those for search #3 in all contexts.


Test saved search #5 has a single criterion, Body *doesn't* contain "enciklopediisto" (so its results should complement those of search #3).

The result list for search #5 contains test mail #2, unless Thunderbird is in online mode and Search Online is enabled, in which case a single mail (which is not test mail #2) is listed. That mail is the last one I received.

Test saved search #6 has a single criterion, Body contains "Gadoury".

The result list for search #6 does not contain test mail #2, unless Thunderbird is in online mode and Search Online is enabled, in which case results include test mail #2.


This happens in Thunderbird 45.1.1 on Windows 10. I chose the 2 test mails above because they contained rare words. The point is that searches based on the Body field are extremely unreliable in my setup. However, results are - in a sense unfortunately - not entirely random, which will likely cause users to trust them.

This has the potential to cause indirect data loss.

Comment 1

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

We know that body search is bad, especially on IMAP folders.

Comment 2

[Filipus Klutiero]

Attachment: Test mail #1

Comment 3

[Filipus Klutiero]

Neither test mail #1 nor #2 have bodies containing equal signs (either in source or represented content).

Comment 4

[Filipus Klutiero]

I tried to work around this using Body-based quick filters, but hit bugs reported in tickets #1282244 and #1282346. In the end, I couldn't find any functional way to work around and resorted to using Gmail's web interface. To my surprise, the webmail's search was powerful enough to do that. I used the following search to mark mails which I want to keep from a mailing list:
to:([e-mail]) -to:cheal -cc:cheal -from:chealer (chealer OR Filipus OR Klutiero OR Cloutier)

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Jorg K (GMT+1) from comment #1)
> We know that body search is bad, especially on IMAP folders.

Jorg, do you consider this bug to not be a duplicate of bug 1245532?


(In reply to Filipus Klutiero from comment #4)
> I tried to work around this using Body-based quick filters, but hit bugs
> reported in tickets bug 1282244 and bug 1282346.
(both above bugs are closed)

Comment 7

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, NI for questions) from comment #6)
> Jorg, do you consider this bug to not be a duplicate of bug 1245532?
Since Gmail is IMAP, we could dupe it there.