A
Boolean
search request consists of words or phrases linked by connectors such as
and
and
or
that indicate the relationship between them. Examples:
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 of
pear
|
apple not w/5 pear
| Apple
must not occur within 5 words of
pear
|
apple and not pear
| Only
apple
must be present
|
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:
?
| Matches any single character. Example:
appl?
matches
apply
or
apple.
|
*
| Matches any number of characters. Example:
appl*
matches
application
|
~
| Stemming. Example:
apply~
matches
apply
,
applies
,
applied
.
|
%
| Fuzzy search. Example:
ba%nana
matches
banana
,
bananna
.
|
#
| Phonic search. Example:
#smith
matches
smith
,
smythe
.
|
~~
| Numeric range. Example:
12~~24
matches
18
.
|
:
| Variable term weighting. Example:
apple:4 w/5 pear:1
|