| General
search information. Automatic exclusion of common words: common words
and characters such as “where”, “the” and “how”, as well as certain single
digits and single letters are ignored, because they tend to slow down
your search without improving the results. Capitalization: searches are
NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will
be understood as lower case. For example, searches for “computer”, “Computer”,
and “cOmPuTeR” will all return the same results.
RD Electronic allows you to perform several different types of searches.
For more information on the options available please select one or more
of the following: Basic search, Automatic
“and” searches, Advanced searching,
Specific words or phrases, Multiple forms of words
or phrases, Any form of a specific word,
Proximity searches .
Basic
search
Examples
of a basic search include:
computer |
returns disclosures containing the phrase 'computer' |
computer
software |
returns
disclosures containing the phrase 'computer software' |
computer
and software |
returns
disclosures containing the word 'computer' and also the word 'software' |
computer* |
disclosures
with words beginning computer are returned (ie. computers, computerized) |
computer
soft* |
each
word making up the phrase is considered as a seperate prefix term,
this will find disclosures with the text "computerized softstuff",
"computers software" etc. |
computer
near software |
this
will return disclosures with computer in close proximity to software |
Basic searches may include the following directives:
-
and
( & is shorthand for and)
-
or
( | is shorthand for or)
-
and
not ( &! is shorthand for 'and not) - note no
space between & and !)
-
or
not ( |! is shorthand for 'or not)
- note no space between | and !)
-
near
( ~ is shorthand for near)
-
(
)
Automatic "and" searches
In
a basic search, only disclosures that include all of your search terms
are returned. There is no need to include “and” between terms. To examine
the search phrase used hover the mouse over the text that states how many
disclosures have been returned (in the results box), a box will appear
stating the exact phrase that was used to make the search.
Advanced
searching
Advanced
Searching is switched on when any of the following conditions are
met:
-
the first character is !
-
there are double quotes (") in the search
-
the word "formsof" appears in the search string
-
the word "isabout" appears in the search string
Specific words
or phrases
In
Latin-based and other single-byte languages, a group of characters is
typically interpreted as a word if it is framed by spaces or punctuation,
and a phrase if it consists of multiple words with spaces, and with (or
without) punctuation between them. For example, in the English language,
a word such as clock or calendar consists of one or more characters without
spaces or punctuation. In most languages, a phrase consists of multiple
words with spaces, and with (or without) punctuation between them, such
as cheese, crackers, and apple juice.
The following phrases both search for the word business in the disclosure
database.
business
”business”
This query searches for the specific phrase “common business applications”
.
“common business applications”
Multiple
forms of words or phrases
You
can search for text that begins with a specified word or phrase. The specified
text used for the search is called a prefix term.
When the prefix term is a word, all entries that begin with the word will
be returned. For example, to search for all disclosures that contain the
word ice, as in ice, ice cream, or icecap, the query looks like this:
“ice*”
All text that matches the text specified before the asterisk (*) is returned.
If the text and asterisk are not delimited by double quotation marks,
as in :
ice* then the search engine considers the asterisk as a character and
will search for exact matches to ice*.
When the prefix term is a phrase, each word making up the phrase is considered
a separate prefix term. All disclosures that have words beginning with
the prefix terms will be returned. For example, the prefix term “light
bread*” will find disclosures with text of either “light breaded”, “lightly
breaded”, or “light bread.”
“light bread*”
Any
form of a specific word
Any
form of a specific word (Generation Term)
You can search for all the different tenses of a verb or both the singular
and plural forms of a noun. For example, this query searches for any form
of dry (dry, dried, drying, and so on).
FORMSOF(INFLECTIONAL,”dry”)
Note that a single term cannot be used to match both nouns and verbs in
the same query.
Proximity search
You
can search for words or phrases in close proximity to another word or
phrase. In addition, you can specify two words or phrases in any order
and get the same result. This example searches for the word user close
to the word computers.
user NEAR computers
However, you can also reverse the words in the phrase to get the same
result:
computers NEAR user
You can specify the tilde (~) in place of the NEAR keyword in the earlier
queries, and get the same results:
computers ~ user
More than two words or phase can be specified in the search conditions.
For example, it is possible to say:
hardware ~ software ~ computer
This means that hardware should be in close proximity to software, and
software should be in close proximity to computer. In addition,
matching the prefix of a word can be combined with searching for a word
or phrase in close proximity to another word or phrase. This example searches
for all descriptions in which the description has sauces in close proximity
to any form of mix, such as mixing, or mixed.
sauces ~ “mix*”
To find wheat bread mix and also wheatberry bread mix, you could use this
type of search:
“wheat*” ~ “bread mix”
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