Search Tips
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 -hot" 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 "Zoltan
Milosevic" (quotes included) would not generate a hit from "Slobodan Milosevic
met with Zoltan Smith". 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.
Intermediate Search 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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