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Wildcard characters are often used in place of one or more characters when you do not know what the real character is or you do not want to type the entire name.
Wildcards cannot be used as the first character of a search and they can only be used in single terms (not phrases).
You can use the following wildcards:
Asterisk (*) as a substitute for zero or more characters. For example—g*t will find get, great and gt
Question mark (?) as a substitute for a single character. For example—g?t will find get and gate but not great or grunt
When running a Text Search query, you can use the following Boolean characters:
| Operator | Description | Syntax | Example |
|
OR |
Searches for items containing either (or both) of two terms. When you enter multiple words or phrases without an operator, the OR is implied. |
A OR B
|
|
|
AND |
Searches for items containing both terms. |
A AND B |
|
|
NOT (-) Prohibit |
Searches for items containing the first term but not the second term. Cannot be used with a single term. |
A NOT B
|
|
| + (required) | Searches for items containing the required term and optionally the second term. |
+A B |
|
Enter a tilde (~) character after a word to find words of similar or identical spelling. This is a useful way of finding spelling mistakes.
For example, searching for roam~ will find words such as 'roams' and 'foam' and 'room'.
Finds words that are within a specified word distance from each other—the tilde (~) specifies proximity.
For example, “happy busy”~10
Searches for the existence of the words happy and busy within 10 words of each other.
You can use the following characters to refine the criteria of a Text Search query:
|
Character |
Name | Use |
|
+ |
Plus
|
Indicate words or phrases that must be included |
|
- |
Hyphen |
Can be used in place of NOT |
|
& |
Ampersand |
Can be used in place of AND |
|
| |
Pipe |
Can be used in place of OR |
|
! |
Exclamation mark |
Can be used in place of NOT |
|
( ) |
Round brackets |
Groups clauses to form sub queries |
|
{ } |
Curly brackets |
Signify exclusive range queries |
|
^ |
Caret |
Symbol with a boost factor (a number) to Indicate level of proximity ^10 |
|
" " |
Double quotes |
Enclose a group of words to enable search for a phrase |
|
~ |
Tilde |
Indicate proximity |
|
* |
Asterisk |
Multiple character wildcard to include any number of characters |
|
? |
Question mark |
Single character wild card to include only one character |
|
: |
Colon |
Indicate a field |
|
\ |
Backslash |
Use before a special character to include it in the search |
