how to get a list of messages from selection in Mail with AppleScript

Question

This works:

 tell application "Mail"
 set x to every message in inbox whose subject contains "deal"
 end tell

Now I want to do the same using the current selection, but this does not work:

tell application "Mail"
set x to every message in selection whose subject contains "deal"
end tell

getting error

"Mail got an error: Can’t make every message of selection whose subject contains \"deal\" into type specifier." number -1700 to specifier

What am I missing?

Answer 1

Unfortunately you cannot use the whose clause on the selection property.

Workaround is a repeat loop

tell application "Mail"
    set theMessages to selection
    set filteredMessages to {}
    repeat with aMessage in theMessages
        if subject of aMessage contains "deal" then set end of filteredMessages to contents of aMessage
    end repeat
end tell