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Content Central supports three types of full-text search requests:
An any words search is any sequence of text, such as a sentence or question. In this type of search, use quotation marks around phrases, place a + in front of any word or phrase that is required, and place a - in front of a word or phrase to exclude it.
An all words search request is similar to an any words request expect that all of the words in the search request must be present for a document to be found.
A search request consists of word or phrase groups linked by connectors such as AND and OR, which indicate the relationship between them.
Table B.1. Boolean Search Requests
| 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 occur, but not within 5 words of pear |
| apple and not pear | only apple must be present |
If you use more than one connector, use parentheses to indicate precisely what you want to search for. For example, apple and pear or orange 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.
Search terms may include the following special characters:
Table B.2. Special Characters
| ? | matches any character |
| = | matches any single digit |
| * | matches any number of characters |
| ~~ | range search |
To search for a phrase, use quotation marks around it.
If a phrase contains a noise word, the search engine will skip over the noise word when searching for it. For example, when search for statue of liberty, the engine would retrieve documents containing the word statue, any intervening word, and the word liberty.
Punctuation inside of a search word is treated as a space. Example: can't would be treated as a phrase consisting of two words: can and t.
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.
The = wildcard matches any single digit. For example: N=== would match N123 but not N1234 or Nabc.
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).
Add fuzziness selectively using the % character. The number of % characters you add determines the number of differences the search engine 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 find Smithe and Smythe.
To ask the search engine 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.
To add stemming selectively, add a ~ at the end of words that you want stemmed in a search. Example: apply~ The stemming rules included with the search engine are designed to work with the English language.
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 containing apple within 5 words of a number between 12 and 17.
A numeric range search includes the upper and lower bounds (so 12 and 17 would be retrieved in the above example).
Numeric range searches only work with positive integers.
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 to ignore, then 123,456.78 would be interpreted as 12345678.
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 contains both phrases. (apple or banana) and (pear w/5 grape) would retrieve any document that (1) contains either apple OR banana, AND (2) contains pear 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 pear would 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 of pear. 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 |
The pre/N connector is like W/N but also specifies that the first expression must occur before the second. Example:
| (apple or pear) pre/5 banana |
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 |
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 apple is too close to pear. In the pear not w/20 apple request, the search engine searches for pear and excludes cases where pear is too close to apple.