Indexing Chemical Names

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KLZ
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Indexing Chemical Names

Post by KLZ »

Chemical names often have different constructions for the same name. e.g. polylactic acid, poly-lactic acid. How do we set the indexes or eneable the search to capture the following: poly(lactic acid) (there is no space either side of the parens)? It seems that using poly-lactic-acid as the search term does not capture or highlight that construction.
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Indexing Chemical Names

Post by mark »

The punctuation, parens in this case, are breaking the phrase binding. You'll need to search for the individual words perhaps with a proximity specification such as "w/2" if you're using withinmode word.
KLZ
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Indexing Chemical Names

Post by KLZ »

The term is part of a phrase, e.g.: +claim @0 poly-lactic-acid pva w/6. What do you recommend in this case?
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Indexing Chemical Names

Post by mark »

You could use * instead of - to maintain the unit binding but allow it to span more.
KLZ
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Indexing Chemical Names

Post by KLZ »

Because we are searching for a lot of chemicals in multiple search strings we have created equivalence files for all the terms. * and ? do not seem to be interpreted when they are in an equivalence file.
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Indexing Chemical Names

Post by mark »

More specifically wildcards are not special in lists of multiple terms but are special in single terms.

Add poly(lactic acid) to your equiv file.
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