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Table Of Contents
Field Searches
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Near Value
You can also use the special word NEAR between words or phrases that must be within 10 words
of each other, but in the same order.
For example, taxes NEAR deductions will find stories containing taxes after all the deductions,
but NOT deductions figured from state taxes
Field Searches
Field searches look in specified Form fields (such as Writer, Endorsed-By, Title, Tape ID, and so
on) or in virtual fields (such as Form, Cues, and Body) for information you request.
Field Operator
To search for stories containing field values matching a particular pattern, precede the pattern by
the field name, using the colon ( : ) as a separator. All field operators must not have any white
space between the field name and the operator. You can have white space after the operator
(before the value). If there are multiple field operators, they must not have any white space
between them, as in:
:= :! :!= ~! :# ::
Example, a query using a colon, such as title:scotus, will find stories in which the title field has
the value scotus (Supreme Court of the United States). The field name is not case-sensitive.
This construct will also work for any arbitrary search subexpression. So, you can combine it with
other operators such as OR or NOT, and use grouping such as parentheses or square brackets as
in this example:
writer: (eric* | *smith)
This example will find all stories where the writer’s user ID either begins with eric or ends with
smith, such as eric, erics, ericsmith, eric-s, ericson, smith, esmith, bobsmith, and so on.
As another example, the colon (:) can be augmented by the negation operators (! or NOT).
For example, writer:!esmith will find all stories for which the writer was not esmith.
Here is another example: Endorsed-by:!*
This example will list all stories that have not been endorsed (nothing in the Endorsed-By field).