Searching with Wildcards and Boolean Operators

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  • antman
    New Member
    • Jan 2005
    • 11
    • 3.0.3

    Searching with Wildcards and Boolean Operators

    I am setting up vBulletin for use within our company Intranet and since not all our users are familiar with the use of bulletin boards, I am writing instructions on how to use various features of vBulletin.

    One of these is the search feature. Therefore I would like to know what wildcards and booleon operators can be used when search in vBulletin.

    For example:

    Is it * for any number of any characters in a word? i.e. comput* would return compute, computer, computing, etc.

    Does ? represent one character within a word?

    Does enclosing two or more words in double-quotes tell vBulleting to search for instances of those words together in that order?

    Does vBulleting make use of AND, OR and XOR (exclusive OR) operators?


    Your help with this is very much appreciated.

    Thanks
  • Wayne Luke
    vBulletin Technical Support Lead
    • Aug 2000
    • 73981

    #2
    In the default search engine:

    * is a wildcard that replaces one or more characters.

    ? is not used as far as I am aware.

    You cannot search in phrases. A search for "word1 word2" will return all posts that contain either word.

    You can use boolean operators such as AND, OR but not XOR. You can also use + or - to control searches.

    If you implement the technology preview of Full-Text Search then you have more options. This scheduled to be available in the next major version but is available now without support. The instructions for implementing it are available at vBulletin.org.
    Translations provided by Google.

    Wayne Luke
    The Rabid Badger - a vBulletin Cloud demonstration site.
    vBulletin 5 API

    Comment

    • antman
      New Member
      • Jan 2005
      • 11
      • 3.0.3

      #3
      Originally posted by Wayne Luke
      You can use boolean operators such as AND, OR but not XOR. You can also use + or - to control searches.
      Thanks for the reply.

      Just a few other questions:

      When you use +, would that be the same as AND?

      Is - the same as NOT? If so, do you need to put - before each word you want to exclude or just once before a list of words you want to exclude?

      Is NOT a valid operator?


      Once again your help is appreciated.

      Thanks

      Comment

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