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Each term may be preceded
by the standard Boolean operators not, and, or or.
If you search for “constructivism not symbolism”, you’ll
find all documents containing the word “constructivism”
except those documents which also contain the word “symbolism”.
If you type in “and constructivism and symbolism and
impressionism”, you’ll find only those documents which contain
all three search terms. The default value is or. Thus, a search
for “constructivism symbolism impressionism” would return
pages with at least one of the three terms.
Altavista’s shorthand
notation works too. A search on “constructivism-symbolism” is
equivalent to the first example, and “+constructivism+symbolism+impressionism”
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 “Kliun Ivan”
(quotes included) would not generate a hit from “Kliun Ivan
met with Kazimir Malevich”. Without quotes, the sentence would
count. Boolean operators can also act on quotations: a search
on ‘+the +symbolistic not “the symbolistic” ‘would return
only those documents where “the” and “symbolistic”
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 funtion.
These rules are based
on Altavista’s
query syntax; a look at their Search
Tips may
prove useful.
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