Use a search query form
The Portal Search Engine allows the use of the following search syntaxes.
These can only be used when searching the "search_query" parameter.
- Plus ( + ) and minus ( - ) signs
- The plus and minus signs do not join terms, but only operate on the term that follows them.
- Quotation marks ( " )
- Use quotes to combine words into search phrases, for example "IBM software". When you search for strings with special query characters, such as a blank or a colon ( : ), enclose your search string in quotes.
- Trailing wild cards
- Use an asterisk ( * ) as a trailing wild card in your search string, for example softw* .
Using the plus and minus signs
For your query, type any words that describe what you are looking for. Use the plus and minus signs as follows:
- Put a plus sign ( + ) in front of the words that you want to be present in the returned documents.
- Put a minus sign ( - ) in front of the words that must not be present in the returned documents.
- When using signs, do not leave any space between the sign and the following word qualified by the sign.
Plus sign examples
Minus sign examples
- +thinkpad
- All documents retrieved must contain the word thinkpad. A single unsigned word, thinkpad, is also read this way, and is treated by the search engine as +thinkpad.
- +thinkpad +drivers
- All documents retrieved must contain the word thinkpad and the word drivers.
- +thinkpad drivers
- All documents retrieved must contain the word thinkpad, but only optionally the word drivers.
- +thinkpad -drivers
- All documents retrieved must contain the word thinkpad but must not contain the word drivers.
- Do not use only minus signed terms for your search; they will not produce a result list. The reason is that in this case the search terms are too vague to allow for a meaningful scoring of the found documents.
- Use spaces between signed terms in order to distinguish them from terms that contain a minus sign, such as e-mail. Note that e-mail is treated as "e-mail" whereas e -mail is treated as optionally e , and the word mail should not be contained in the resulting documents.
Parent topic:
Creating a search query