OR search using @0 vs (,)

skalyanaraman · Post by **skalyanaraman** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 5:14 pm

Hi,
I ran a search for the following,

MYTEXT like '(stat*,union)'
which gave me 84k hits.

But,
MYTEXT like 'stat* union @0'
is giving me 247257 hits.

Why is the descrepancy?

our wordc and langc are

<$wordc= '[\alnum\X27]'>
<$langc= '[\alnum\X27 \-]'>

thanks!!

Post by **John** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 5:18 pm

The (,) is an equivalence operator, and takes the asterix literally, not as a wildcard.

skalyanaraman · Post by **skalyanaraman** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 5:20 pm

thanks for the quick reply.
I have been under the impression, that (,) triggers a OR search.
what does equivalance operator do?
does it do, thesauraus lookup or something?
thanks!!

Post by **John** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 5:24 pm

It is basically an inline thesaurus, so (word1,word2) is the same as if word1 and word2 were equivalent in the thesaurus and you just searched for one of them.

skalyanaraman · Post by **skalyanaraman** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 5:40 pm

oh!!
is there a way to make * mean wildcard (instead of literally) in (,)?
also, is this inline thesaurus Linear searching?

Thanks!!

Post by **Kai** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 10:18 am

There's no way to make * mean wildcard inside a paren list; its meaning is escaped because it's assumed the reason for the paren list is that all specific words are known and given.

Words in a paren list, just like words in the builtin or user thesaurus, are looked up in the index if possible (ie. indexable). There is no distinction that would cause a word in a paren list to be linearly searched when the same word in the thesaurus would not (or vice versa).