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Search Request | Explanation |
apple and pear | both words must be present. |
apple or pear | either word can be present. |
apple w/5 pear | apple must occur within 5 words ofpear. |
apple not w/5 pear | apple must not occur within 5 words of pear. |
apple and not pear | only apple must be present. |
apple w/5 xfirstword | apple must occur in the first five words. |
apple w/5 xlastword | apple must occur in the last five words. |
If you use more than one connector, you should use parentheses to indicate precisely what you want to search for. For example, apple and pear or orange juice could mean(apple and pear) or orange, or it could mean apple and (pear or orange).
Noise words, such as if and the, are ignored in searches.
Search terms may include the following special characters:
Character | Meaning |
? | matches any character |
* | matches any number of characters |
% | fuzzy search |
# | phonicsearch |
~ | |
& | synonym search |
~~ | |
: |
You do not need to use any special punctuation or commands to search for a phrase. Simply enter the phrase the way it ordinarily appears. You can use a phrase anywhere in a search request. Example:
apple w/5 fruit salad
If a phrase contains a noise word, the search engine will skip over the noise word when searching for it. For example, a search for statue of liberty would retrieve any document containing the word statue, any intervening word, and the word liberty.
Punctuation inside of a search word is treated as a space. Thus, can't would be treated as a phrase consisting of two words: can and t.1843(c)(8)(ii)would become 1843 c 8 ii (four words).
A numeric range search is a search for any numbers that fall within a range. To add a numeric range component to a search request, enter the upper and lower bounds of the search separated by ~~ like this:
apple w/5 12~~17
This request would find any document containingapple within 5 words of a number between 12 and17.
Notes
1. A numeric range search includes the upper and lower bounds (so 12 and17 would be retrieved in the above example).
2. Numeric range searches only work with positive integers.
3. For purposes of numeric range searching, decimal points and commas are treated as spaces and minus signs are ignored. For example,-123,456.78 would be interpreted as: 123 456 78(three numbers). Using alphabet customization, the interpretation of punctuation characters can be changed. For example, if you change the comma and period from space toignore, then 123,456.78 would be interpreted as 12345678.
A search word can contain the wildcard characters* and ?. A ? in a word matches any single character, and a *matches any number of characters. The wildcard characters can be in any position in a word. For example:
appl* would match apple, application, etc.
*cipl* would match principle, participle, etc.
appl? would match apply and apple but not apples.
ap*ed would match applied, approved, etc.
Use of the * wildcard character near the beginning of a word will slow searches somewhat.
A natural language search request is any combination of words, phrases, or sentences. After a natural language search, the search engine can sort retrieved documents by their relevance to your search request. Weighting of retrieved documents takes into account: the number of documents each word in your search request appears in (the more documents a word appears in, the less useful it is in distinguishing relevant from irrelevant documents); the number of times each word in the request appears in the documents; and the density of hits in each document. Noise words and search connectors like NOT and OR are ignored.
Because natural language searching uses word information stored in an index, it is impossible to perform an unindexed natural language search. Therefore, natural language searching is not available in unindexed or combination searches.
Fuzzy searching will find a word even if it is misspelled. For example, a fuzzy search for apple will find appple. Fuzzy searching can be useful when you are searching text that may contain typographical errors, or for text that has been scanned using optical character recognition (OCR). There are two ways to add fuzziness to searches:
You can also add fuzziness selectively using the % character. The number of % characters you add determines the number of differences dtSearch will ignore when searching for a word. The position of the % characters determines how many letters at the start of the word have to match exactly. Examples:
ba%nana Word must begin with ba and have at most one difference between it and banana.
b%%anana Word must begin with b and have at most two differences between it and banana.
Phonic searching looks for a word that sounds like the word you are searching for and begins with the same letter. For example, a phonic search for Smith will also findSmithe and Smythe.
To ask dtSearch to search for a word phonically, put a # in front of the word in your search request. Examples:#smith, #johnson
Stemming extends a search to cover grammatical variations on a word. For example, a search for fish would also find fishing. A search for applied would also find applying, applies, and apply
If you want to add stemming selectively, add a ~ at the end of words that you want stemmed in a search. Example: apply~
By default all words in a request count equally in counting hits. However, you can change this by specifying the relative weights for each term in your search request, like this:
apple:5 and pear:1
This request would retrieve the same documents as apple and pear but, the search engine would weight apple five times as heavily as pear when sorting the results.
In a natural language search, the search engine automatically weights terms based on an analysis of their distribution in your documents. If you provide specific term weights in a natural language search, these weights will override the weights the search engine would otherwise assign.
A noise word is a word such as the orif that is so common that it is not useful in searches. To save time, noise words are not indexed and are ignored in index searches.
Search connectors such as and andor should always be listed as noise words since it is not possible to search for them.
Use the AND connector in a search request to connect two expressions, both of which must be found in any document retrieved. For example:
apple pie and poached pear would retrieve any document that contained both phrases.
(apple or banana) and (pear w/5 grape)would retrieve any document that (1)contained eitherapple OR banana, AND (2)containedpear within 5 words of grape.
Use the OR connector in a search request to connect two expressions, at least one of which must be found in any document retrieved. For example, apple pie or poached pearwould retrieve any document that contained apple pie,poached pear, or both.
Use the W/N connector in a search request to specify that one word or phrase must occur within N words of the other. For example, apple w/5 pear would retrieve any document that contained apple within 5 words ofpear. The following are examples of search requests using W/N:
(apple or pear) w/5 banana
(apple w/5 banana) w/10 pear
(apple and banana) w/10 pear
Some types of complex expressions using the W/N connector will produce ambiguous results and should not be used. The following are examples of ambiguous search requests:
(apple and banana) w/10 (pear and grape)
(apple w/10 banana) w/10 (pear and grape)
In general, at least one of the two expressions connected by W/N must be a single word or phrase or a group of words and phrases connected by OR. Example:
(apple and banana) w/10 (pear or grape)
(apple and banana) w/10 orange tree
The search engine uses two built in search words to mark the beginning and end of a file: xfirstword andxlastword. The terms are useful if you want to limit a search to the beginning or end of a file. For example, apple w/10 xlastword would search for apple within 10 words of the end of a document.
Use NOT in front of any search expression to reverse its meaning. This allows you to exclude documents from a search. Example:
apple sauce and not pear
NOT standing alone can be the start of a search request. For example, not pear would retrieve all documents that did not contain pear.
If NOT is not the first connector in a request, you need to use either AND or OR with NOT:
apple or not pear
not (apple w/5 pear)
The NOT W/ ("not within") operator allows you to search for a word or phrase not in association with another word or phrase. Example:
apple not w/20 pear
Unlike the W/ operator, NOT W/ is not symmetrical. That is, apple not w/20 pear is not the same as pear not w/20 apple. In the apple not w/20 pear request, the search engine searches for apple and excludes cases where appleis too close to pear. In the pear not w/20 applerequest, the search engine searches for pear and excludes cases where pear is too close to apple.
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