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Advanced searches
and tips for the beginner:
The rules for this search engine are similiar to
Altavista's query syntax.
Each term may be preceded by the standard
Boolean operators not, and, or or. If
you search for "dogs not pizzas," you'll find all documents
containing the word "dogs" except those documents which
also contain the word "pizzas". If you type in "and
hot and dog and pizzas," you'll find only those documents
which contain all three search terms. The default value
is or. Thus, a search for "hot dog pizzas" would return pages
with at least one of the three terms.
Altavista's shorthand notation works too.
A search on "dogs -pizzas" is equivalent to the first example,
and "+hot +dog +pizzas" will return the same documents as
the second.
If a search term has at least one capital
letter, like "parIS," the search will be case sensitive with
respect to that word - that is, only documents containing
"parIS" will be found. On the other hand, lowercase words
like "paris" will generate hits from "Paris," "PARIS," or
"parIS."
To group a collection of words, use quotes.
For example, the query "Donald Duck" (quotes included) would
not generate a hit from "Donald met with Daisy Duck." Without
quotes, the sentence would count. Boolean operators can also
act on quotations: a search on '+the +kitten not "the kitten"'
would return only those documents where "the" and "kitten"
appear separately.
The engine finds words, not strings. A search
for "in" would turn up only that word, not "bin," "inside,"
or "acquaintance." To perform a string search, preface your
term with the dollar sign - a query on "$in" would find all
words lists above. Note that more complex wildcard searches
using the asterisk are not permitted. Including the
asterisk in your query will return a list of all files, but
that's its only function.
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