For convenient tab-completion of recently used e-mail addresses inside mutt, this shell script populates the $mutt_alias file with all e-mail addresses found in a recent mail in the INBOX or Sent (or any other local maildir) folder.

Usage

mutt-alias.sh [-a alias file] [-d days] [-p] [-f] [-b] [-n] DIRECTORIES

Add mutt aliases for all e-mails addresses found in local maildir DIRECTORIES.

OPTIONS:
  -a          alias file (default: value of $alias_file in ~/.muttrc)
  -d          maximal number of days since last sent mail to (default: 0 = unlimited)
  -p          purge aliases previously added by mutt-alias.sh
  -f          filter out email addresses that are probably impersonal
  -b          backup the current alias file (if it exists) to *.prev
  -n          create a new alias file instead of modifying the current one
  -h          display this help and exit

For example, if you use mbsync, then DIRECTORIES could be

    $XDG_DATA_HOME/mbsync/Sent/cur

and this command would add all addresses you sent an e-mail to in the last year:

  mutt-alias.sh -d 365 -bpf "$XDG_DATA_HOME"/mbsync/work/Sent/cur

To decode 7-bit ASCII encoded full names that contain non-ASCII letters (which start, for example, with =?UTF-8?Q? or =?ISO-8859-1?Q?), ensure that perl is executable and the Encode::MIME::Header module is installed.

Related

The aliases-gen.sh script by @vimpostor parses all addresses from a mail folder and adds them as aliases but is based on the notmuch-indexer, which is much superior because it avoids doing low-level mail parsing in Bash.

The vim-mutt-aliases plug-in lets you complete e-mail addresses in Vim by those in your mutt alias file.

The auto_add_alias.sh shell script adds an alias via $display_fiter for every opened e-mail (and is expanded on in mutt-alias-auto-add).

Setup

Best run by a, say weekly, (ana)cronjob, on AC/DC as outlined in my blogpost on a sane (ana)cron setup.

Credits

Lee M. Yeoh's shell script mutt-vid served as a template and which is under GNU General Public License v3.0; thus, the same conditions apply.