Archive of Okrandian Canon

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Search Help

Character		Function
=	equal	Makes the matching of the search term case sensetive (prefix).
-	minus	Document matches only if the search term does not occur in it (prefix).
"…"	quotes	Search for a phrase which contains spaces.
*	asterisk	Wildcard matching any sequence of numbers (0–9), letters (a–z) and apostrophes (').
	space	Within quotes the space is a wildcard matching all non-alphabetic characters (the opposite of “*”).

Search Terms

A search term may consist of either a word or a phrase. If you have more than one search term then they are combined with logical "and", i.e. for a document to match all search terms must be present (except when using negative search terms, see below). A phrase is a search term containing one or more spaces, these search terms must be given within quotes ("like this"). Asterisks and spaces are wildcard characters inside a phrase, while all other characters are interpreted literally, outside a phrases only the asterisk can be used as a wildcard character. One can not use quotes within a phrase (as this would terminate the phrase).

Modifiers

There are two modifiers which may be prefixed to a search term (either phrase or word). If any of these occur within a phrase (inside quotes) they are interpreted literally. An equal sign makes the search term case sensetive (quite useful when searching for something in Klingon) meaning that it will only match words which are identical even when it comes to upper/lower case. E.g. the search term »=voDleH« only matches the word "voDleH", while the term »voDleH« would also match "VODLEH", "vodleh", "VoDlEh" etc. A minus inverts the matching so that only a document which does not contain the search term matches.

If you use minus and equal at the same time, they may come in either order (»-=voDleH« and »=-voDleH« mean the same thing) but they must always be placed outside any quotes (i.e. the search term »-="voDleH"« means the same thing as the two previous examples, while »"-=voDleH"« does not).

Wildcards

The asterisk is a wildcard character matching any sequence consisting of zero or more letters (a–z), aphostrophes (') and/or numbers (0–9). The space is also a wildcard (when used within quotes) which matches the exact opposite of the asterisk, i.e. any sequence of characters that does not include a letter, aphostrophe or number. This means that the search term »=jatlh qama' jI'oj« e.g. will find any file that contains the text "jatlh qama'; jI'oj", even though when there is a semicolon between the two sentences.