How To Search

Single term query

The query specifies only one term for retrieving all documents that contain the term. e.g.,

subframe

AND query

The query specifies two or more terms for retrieving all documents that contain both terms. You can insert the and operator between the terms. e.g.,

front and subframe

Or, you can omit the and operator. Terms that are separated by one ore more spaces are assumed to be an AND query.

OR query

The query specifies two or more terms for retrieving all documents that contain either term. You can insert the or operator between the terms. e.g.,

Porterfield or Hawk

NOT query

The query specifies two or more terms for retrieving all documents that contain a first term but do not contain the following terms. You can insert the not operator between the terms to do NOT query. e.g.,

pads not metalmaster

Grouping

You can group queries by enclosing the terms in parentheses. The parentheses should be separated from the term by one or more spaces. e.g.,

( Toyo or Kuhmo ) and pressure not Hoosier

Note: The space between the parantheses is very important.

Phrase searching

You can search for a phrase which consists of two or more terms by surrounding them with double quotes like "..." or with braces like {...}. In Namazu, precision of phrase searching is not 100 %, so it causes wrong results occasionally. e.g.,

{brake pads}

Substring matching

The are three types of substring matching searching.

Prefix matching

driver* school prep (matches driver, drivers, and driver's)

Inside matching

*press* air (terms that contain press, such as compression, pressure, or compressor)

Suffix matching

*fest 2001 (terms that are terminated with fest, such as SIGFEST or bushingfest)

Regular expressions

You can use regular expressions for pattern matching. The regular expressions must be surrounded by slashes like /.../. Namazu uses Ruby's regular regular expressions engine. It offers generally Perl compatible flavor. e.g.,

/compress(or|ion)?/

Field-specified searching

You can limit your search to specific fields such as Subject:, From:, Message-Id:. It's especially convenient for Mail documents. e.g.,

• +subject:racecar
  (Retrieving all documents which contain racecar in the Subject: field)
• +subject:"track car"
  (Retrieving all documents which contain track car in the Subject: field)
• +from:gustave
  (Retrieving all documents which contain Gustave in the From: field)
• +message-id:<199801240555.OAA18737@foo.bar.jp>
  (Retrieving a certain document which contains specified Message-Id:)

Notes

• Avoid using the plural form of a word, as it will reduce the number of potential hits. For example, instead of valve adjustments, you would be better off using valve adjustment, or an even better choice would valve adjust*.
• In any queries, the search engine ignores case distinctions of alphabet characters. In other words, the search engine does case-insensitive pattern matching.
• The search engine can handle a term that contains symbols like P/N. Since this handling isn't complete, you can describe P and N instead of P/N, but it may/will cause noisy and unexpected results.
• Substring matching and field-specified searching takes more time than other methods. In general, you won;t notice this extra time unless the web server is very busy.
• If you want to use and, or or not simply as terms, you can surround them respectively with double quotes like "..." or braces like {...}.

This search system is powered by Namazu v2.0.5

This index contains 82,695 documents and 433,862 keywords, and was last updated on 2008-09-28

Please direct questions and comments to mark@hilbush.com