A character is a letter, number, or symbol. Most database programs use a selection of special characters as operators. An operator is a symbol that represents a specific action that the database program should take.
You can only use special characters in fields whose search type is TEXT, such as most Description fields. (Search types are set using the Database Configuration application.) Text searching only searches for words. To search for strings within words, you must use wildcards. You cannot search for words that are on the stop word list for the given language and database. Thus, you cannot search for words like: a, an, and, the, and is.
The following list defines the special characters that serve as operators, and some guidelines on how to use them when you are constructing queries.
ampersand (&) — AND. You use the AND operator to search for records that contain at least one occurrence of all of your query terms. The operator must be placed between two query terms otherwise the system will display an error message.
hyphen (-) — MINUS. You use the MINUS operator to search for records that contain one query term, but you want the presence of your second query term to cause the document to be ranked lower in the result set. The operator must be placed between two query terms otherwise the system will display an error message.
pipe (|) — OR. You use the OR operator to search for records that contain at least one occurrence of any of your query terms. The operator must be placed between two query terms otherwise the system will display an error message.
semicolon (;) — You use a semicolon to indicate the end of a SQL command line. Using a semicolon as part of your query text may generate an error message.
tilde (~) — NOT. You use the NOT operator to search for records that contain one query term and not another. The operator must be placed between two query terms otherwise the system will display an error message.
Your database may use additional special characters as operators. For additional information about other characters that are used as operators, refer to the documentation provided with your database.