Site Changes

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

New Feature: Advanced Full-Text Search

This is only available to Subscribers.

Previously, our Full-Text search would return only messages that contained all of the words you entered. I accomplished this by taking each word you entered, throwing out the ones that're too short or too common, and ANDing the remaining words. So, if you entered "Fatt Matt" as your criteria, it would return all messages containing both words.

Now, if you're familiar with query structure, you can include a "/" (pipe) symbol at the beginning of your search and that instructs our search engine to process your entry as-entered.

If you're familiar with the way SQL handles full-text searching, just keep in mind that we don't do FREETEXT in the searches. Only CONTAINS. Anything legal in a CONTAINS function will now be legal in a search here that starts with a "/".

If you're going to trigger the advanced search by including the pipe symbol, make sure you comply with all the rules for searching using CONTAINS. For example, the use of quote marks.

Here are some examples of how to use Advanced Search:

/"Fatt" OR "Matt"
Returns all messages containing either "Fatt" or "Matt" in them.

/"Fat*" AND "Matt"
Returns all messages containing the word "Matt" AND any words beginning with "fat". So if a messages containing "Fat" and "Matt", will be returned, as will messages containing "Matt" and "Fatima".

/"Fat*" AND NOT "Matt"
Returns all messages containing a word that starts with "fat", but not containing the word "Matt" in them. So if a message is "Matt loves Fatima", it won't be returned.

/"Going" NEAR "Moon"
Returns all messages that have the words "Going" and "Moon" in them, and they're close together. Don't ask me how SQL defines "close together". I don't know. But I noticed that doing a search on /"Going" NEAR "Moon" yielded a different result set than just Going Moon.

/formsof (inflectional, go)
Returns all messages containing any form of the word "go", such as "go", "gone", "goes", "going", or even "went".

Seems complicated, eh? Keep in mind that if you're not cozy with the advanced query stuff, the old format works just fine. The advanced stuff is only enabled if you start your query with the "/" symbol.

If you use the advanced query, you're on your own to bring yourself up to speed. This is mostly only going to be useful to people who are already programmers or at least have a lot of experience with advanced queries. If you meet these criteria, and are still having trouble with the advanced queries, post a message to me on #board-504 with the exact text you're entering in the search box.

At this writing, Advanced Search only works on site-wide searches, but I'll have it working on Profile and Board searches shortly.

Edit: For some reason, the site likes to convert the pipe symbol to a slash, so this message is displaying the wrong symbol for you to use.

I just changed the system so the pipe or the slash are recognized as valid prefixes for Advanced Search.