version: evolution-2.8.0-1.fc6 The "starts with" subject filter does not match the initial string as presented to the user in the subject line. I looked at the raw message source and observed that Subject header line was: Subject: foo but if you set the subject starts with filter to "foo" it fails to match, but if you set it to " foo" it matches. It appears some part of the code is stripping leading whitespace and others are not. Although RFC 822 would say the leading white space after the field-name and colon is technically part of the subject field body common sense and user expectation would say leading white space does not count when matching the beginning of a subject. The leading white space should be stripped (or ignored) either when performing a "starts with" match.
Verified on Fedora Core 6 as well as Rawhide. It works fine for search folders. I have countless search folders for particular bugs that are configured as: Subject Starts With "[Bug xxxxxx]" Strange that Evolution would not be using the same mechanism for evaluating filter rules and search folder rules. Closing as UPSTREAM since an equivalent bug report exists upstream. I will continue to track the problem there. Please refer to [1] for further updates. [1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=343450