Evidence Operators


Evidence operators can specify either a basic word search or an intelligent word search. A basic word search finds documents that contain only the word or words specified in the query. An intelligent word search expands the query terms to create an expanded word list so that the search returns documents that contain variations of the query terms. For example, the THESAURUS operator selects documents that contain the word specified, as well as its synonyms.

Documents retrieved using evidence operators are not relevance-ranked unless you include the MANY modifier. (For examples and more detailed information, see "MANY" in Chapter 4.)

The following table briefly describes each evidence operator. For examples and more detailed descriptions, see "Operators for Searching Full Text"in Chapter 3.

Operator Name
Description
SOUNDEX
Expands the search to include the word you enter and one or more words that "sound like," or whose letter pattern is similar to, the word specified. Collections do not have sound-alike indexes by default; you must build the sound-alike indexes to use this feature.
STEM
Expands the search to include the word you enter and its variations.
THESAURUS
Expands the search to include the word you enter and its synonyms.
TYPO/N
Expands the search to include the word you enter and words similar to the query term. This operator performs "approximate pattern matching" to identify similar words.
WILDCARD
Matches wildcard characters in search strings. Certain characters automatically indicate a wildcard specification.
WORD
Performs a basic word search and selects documents that include one or more instances of the specific word you enter.




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