search(keys, charset = nil) public

Sends a SEARCH command to search the mailbox for messages that match the given searching criteria, and returns message sequence numbers. keys can either be a string holding the entire search string, or a single-dimension array of search keywords and arguments. The following are some common search criteria; see [IMAP] section 6.4.4 for a full list.

<message set>:a set of message sequence numbers. ’,’ indicates an interval, ’:’ indicates a range. For instance, ‘2,10:12,15’ means "2,10,11,12,15".
BEFORE <date>:messages with an internal date strictly before <date>. The date argument has a format similar to 8-Aug-2002.
BODY <string>:messages that contain <string> within their body.
CC <string>:messages containing <string> in their CC field.
FROM <string>:messages that contain <string> in their FROM field.
NEW:messages with the \Recent, but not the \Seen, flag set.
NOT <search-key>:negate the following search key.
OR <search-key> <search-key>:"or" two search keys together.
ON <date>:messages with an internal date exactly equal to <date>, which has a format similar to 8-Aug-2002.
SINCE <date>:messages with an internal date on or after <date>.
SUBJECT <string>:messages with <string> in their subject.
TO <string>:messages with <string> in their TO field.

For example: 

  p imap.search(["SUBJECT", "hello", "NOT", "NEW"])
  #=> [1, 6, 7, 8]
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