Basic Search Principles and Rules

Contents:

• Spaces
• Search Phrases
• AND Operator
• Commas (AND Operator)
• Exact Searches
• Boolean Operators
• Partial Words
• Reserved Characters
• Capitalization
• Dates

For simple searches, it is easiest to type a few words conforming to the principles and rules listed below:

• Spaces (AND operator). When you separate multiple words with spaces, the spaces are interpreted as an AND operator as explained below. In other words, entering New York City has the same effect as entering New AND York AND City.
• AND operator.When you enter words separated by the word "AND," a document will only be found if all of the words you specified are contained somewhere in its index entry. For example, if you enter New AND York AND City as your search criteria, you will find "New York City Subways," "City Subways of New York," and "City of York's New Plaza." (For clarity, some people make a habit of enclosing the AND operator with angle brackets like this: New <AND> York <AND> City.)
• Commas, (AND operator). When you enter words separated by commas (or commas plus spaces), a document will only be found if all of the words you specified are contained somewhere in its index entry. (In technical terms, commas are treated as Boolean AND operators.)
• Search phrases (quotation marks). When you enclose multiple words between quotation marks, you create a search phrase. A document will only be found if all of those words in that exact sequence are contained somewhere in its index entry. For example, if you enter the phrase "New York City" as your search criteria, you will find "New York City Subways," but not "City Subways of New York."
• Exact searches. Anything enclosed in double-quote marks is searched for exactly as-is. For example, if you enter "Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe" as your search criteria, only documents that have that exact string of letters and punctuation somewhere in their index entries will be listed. In other words, the commas and the word and are treated as elements to search for rather than as operators.
• Boolean operators.In technical terminology, Netscape Compass Server uses standard Boolean operators such as <and>, <or>, <not>, and so forth.
• Partial words. You can search for combinations of letters, numbers, and common characters regardless of whether or not they form a full, correctly spelled word.
• Reserved characters.When entered in the search box, the characters:
  
  < > " ( )
  
  are treated as special reserved characters that Netscape Compass Server interprets as instructions about how it should conduct the search rather than words to be searched for. If you want to search for these characters, you must enclose them in double-quote marks as part of a phrase.
   
• Capitalization. Capitalization does not count in a search. You can enter Upper or lower case letters (or even all CAPITALS) in the search box and Netscape Compass Server will find all documents matching your criteria regardless of whether or not the letters are capitalized.
• Dates. The following principles apply when searching by date (before, after, etc.):
  • <NAME="RULEPARTIAL" Full dates only. You must use full dates. Partial dates like "6/97" are not allowed.
  • Days and years. You must use numbers for the day and year.
  • <NAME="RULEMONTHS" Months. You can use numbers or words for the month. When using words for the month, you can use the common abbreviations. For example,
    • 9
    • September
    • sept
    • sep
    are all acceptable for September.
     
  • <NAME="RULEFORMAT"Separators. You can use standard numerical date punctuation such as 1/15/97, 1-15-97, and 1.15.97.
  • <NAME="RULEDATEORD"Element order. Numerical dates must be entered in month-day-year order. For example, 1-9-97 represents January 9th.
• Day-month-year order. To use dates in day-month-year order, you must spell out (or abbreviate) the month. For example, 1 sep 97 for September 1st.