HP Reference Information Storage System Version 1.6 User Guide revision 2 (T3559-90810, August 2007)

words of the sequence. A document matches a proximity word sequence if all words occur in the
document in the same order, with at most N intervening words, where N is the proximity value.
For example, the sequence "bird garden stone"~3 matches any document that has these three
wordsinthisorder,withbird and garden separated by no more than three words, a nd garden and stone
separated by no more than three words. This sequence matches a document with the text abirdinthe
rose garden is near a stone because there are at most three words between successive sequence words.
This sequence also matches abirdgardenwithastonefor the same reason.
Simple word sequences are a special case of proximity word sequences: "..."isthesameas".
. ."~0.Anydocumentsfoundby". . ."~N are also found by ". . ."~M,whenM>N.
Boolean quer
yexpressions
You can combi
ne words, fuzzy words, and word sequences using Boolean (logical) operators AND, OR,
and NOT (thes
e must be uppercase). The following table d escribes Boolea n operators, where exp, exp1,
and exp2 rep
resents a word, fuzzy word, word sequence, or other Boolean query expression.
Table 10 Boolean query expressions
Syntax
Matches
NOT exp
alternative syntax: - exp
alternative syntax: ! exp
all do cuments that do not match exp
exp1 OR exp2
all documents that match either exp1 or exp2
exp1 AND exp2
alternative syntax: exp1 && exp2
alternative syntax: exp1exp2
all documents that ma tch both exp1 and exp2
NOTE:
ThesecondalternativesyntaxforANDindicatesthatANDisthedefaultconnectiveinqueryexpressions.
You do not need to supply AND explicitly. It is assumed if neither AN D nor OR is used explicitly. For
example, the query peace quiet is equivalent to the query peace AND quiet.
A NOT expression must be combined, using AND or OR, with another expression other than NOT.A
query c annot consist solely of ne gative criteria.
NOT quiet
illegal
(NOT quiet) AND (NOT blue) illegal
NOTquietANDblue legal
NOT quiet OR nois*
legal
You must provide the proper number of arguments for a B oolean operator or an error m essage results:
oneargumentforNOT (- or !), two arguments for AND (&& )andOR. For example, the following
queries result in an error message.
• alpha NOT:MissingargumentforNOT
• AND alpha: Missing a rgument for AND
Boolean o perators must be surrounded by one or more separators, typically white space. For example,
the query peas&&carrots is not equivalent to the query peas && carrots; peas&&carrots is a
single word (& isawordcharacter).
Negation operators (- and !) are exceptions to this rule. They must be preceded by a separator, but they
need not be followed by a separator. For example, carrot-a6 is a single query word, but carrot
-a6,likecarrot (- a6), is e quivalent to the Boolean expression carrot AND (NOTa6).
User Guide
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