Searching the Help
To search for information in the Help, type a word or phrase in the Search box. When you enter a group of words, OR is inferred. You can use Boolean operators to refine your search.
Results returned are case insensitive. However, results ranking takes case into account and assigns higher scores to case matches. Therefore, a search for "cats" followed by a search for "Cats" would return the same number of Help topics, but the order in which the topics are listed would be different.
Words and Phrases
| Search for | Example | Results |
|---|---|---|
| A single word | cat
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Topics that contain the word "cat". You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "cats". |
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A phrase. You can specify that the search results contain a specific phrase. |
"cat food" (quotation marks) |
Topics that contain the literal phrase "cat food" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying an OR operator, which finds topics with one of the individual words instead of the phrase. |
Using Boolean Operators
| Search for | Operator | Example |
|---|---|---|
|
Two or more words in the same topic |
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| Either word in a topic |
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| Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase |
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| Topics that contain one string and do not contain another | ^ (caret) |
cat ^ mouse
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| A combination of search types | ( ) parentheses |
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Stemming example
In this example, a user wants stemming only for the words take, ride and walk.
- The acceptable forms of take are take, taken, taking.
- The acceptable forms of walk are walk, walking, walked.
- The acceptable forms of ride are ride, ridden, riding.
The stem dictionary (.STM file) might contain the following setup:
- tak 1 (words with this stem will use the first suffix option)
- rid 1
- walk 2 (words with this stem will use the second suffix option)
The suffix dictionary (.SUF file) would contain:
- e, en, ing, den
- ing, ed
Based on the stem and suffix dictionaries:
Take, taken, taking would result in tak.
Walk, walking, walked would result in walk.
Ride, ridden, riding would result in rid.
These files are not perfect. For example, IR Expert would change taken to tak because suffix index tak and rid are the same.
You could change the configuration so that the stem dictionary (.STM file) contained:
- tak 1
- rid 3 (words with this stem will use the third suffix option)
- walk 2
and the suffix dictionary (.SUF file) contained:
- e, en, ing
- ing, ed
- e, den, ing
Note Setting up these language support files requires a considerable amount of time. It should only be undertaken by someone fluent in the language, and knowledgeable of word components and pronunciation.
Related topics
IR Expert
How IR Expert evaluates documents for relevance
IR Expert file descriptions
Normals dictionary
Stem dictionary
Stop word file
Suffix file
Creating an IR file
