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Below are some search tips to help you get the most from your searches.
Searching using a single word or phrase
If you are looking for a specific word or phrase, just enter the text you are looking for. Searches are NOT case sensitive, so "ESI" and "esi" will retrieve the same result. When searching for a phrase, make your query as simple as possible, since the search function will only find phrases that match your query exactly.
Searching for multiple words
By using OPERATORS, you can search for multiple words at once. The following operators are supported:
- AND - searches for documents that contain all of the words in the query, for example searching for "assembly AND fragments" will locate documents that contain the words assembly and fragments.
- OR - searches for documents that contain any of the words in your query, for example, searching for "Java OR JSP" will locate documents that contain Java, JSP, or both. You can achieve similar results by separating your words with commas, so a search for "Java,JSP" will achieve the same results.
- NOT - allows you to explicitly exclude pages that contain certain words, so a search for "Tags NOT Java" will give you pages that contain Tags but not if the page also contains Java.
You can combine as many operators in your search as you would like, and can also use parentheses () to control the order of precedence. Here are a couple of examples:
- "Tags AND Java OR JSP" will find pages that contain Tags and Java, or JSP. Note that AND always takes precedent over OR, unless you use parenthesis:
- "Tags AND (Java OR JSP)" will find pages that contain Tags and Java, or Tags and JSP.
Wildcards
In some situations, you may be searching for a word or phrase where you are either unsure about the spelling, or are looking for multiple variations on a particular word. Wildcards can be helpful in this case. The two basic wildcards you will use most often are:
- ? - Use the ? to replace any single character in a word. For example, searching for "b?ll" will find bill, bell, ball and bull.
- * - Use * in place of any group of characters, so a search for "b*d" will find bad, band, bend, bind, bid, etc.
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