Advanced Help

The aim of the search is to find references that satisfies a given criterion.

In the search field, you can enter any of the following search expressions.

<word>

The above expression is used to find the references containing the given word in any field.

<words>

The above expression is used to find the references containing the given words in any field. In most cases, this option works. But the correct expression is

<- words>

When you need to specify the field containing the given word or words, you must use the following syntax.

[not] <field> <words>

The above expression is used to find the references containing the given words in any field with a prefix matching <field>.

For example, v matches versiontype and version and volume and visibility, and vo matches volume only. vo is called the abbreviation for the Volume field name. If the <field> is - or *, then matching applies to any field.

If not appears before the <field>, then the sense of the search is reversed. The operator not must be spelled out fully. The symbols ~ and ! can be used in place of not.

Each word is a contiguous sequence of letters, digits and symbols (./). Single characters and a few common words are ignored.

Any word ending with an asterisk (*) is treated as a prefix. Thus, gate* matches gate, gates, gateway, etc.

Any word beginning with an asterisk is treated as a suffix. Thus, *ness matches usefulness, kindness, sadness, etc.

You may use more than one asterisk (*) or question mark (?) in any place in the word. The general meaning of the asterisk (*) is "match any number of any characters" while the question mark (?) means "match any single character". Thus, 1?2*3 matches 1a23 and 1a2bc3 but doesn't match 123.

To match any trailing single character, you must add the dollar symbol ($) after the question mark (?). For example, 12?$ matches 123 and 124 but doesn't match 12, neither 1234.

The special character [chars] matches any single character in chars. When the search is done with the option "match accent and case", and chars contains a sequence of the form a-b, then any character between a and b (inclusive) will match. For example, F[iu]* matches First and Fuzzy, and F[i-u]* matches also Foot.

By using the symbol _ as first character and between words, adjacent words in the Keywords field can be grouped to form a unique word in the search expression. Thus _linear_filter matches the adjacent words linear filter.

You can combine logically two or more search results by using connectives.

[not] <field> <words> and [not] <field> <words>
[not] <field> <words> or [not] <field> <words>

The connective and in the above expression is used to intersect the results of two searches, the connective or is used to join them. Several searches may be combined in this way. Searches are handled in the order in which they appear; there is no precedence. The connectives and and or must be spelled out fully. The symbol & can be used in place of and, and the symbol | can be used in place of or.

The connectives are executed from left to right. To change the search order, you may use braces.

<field> <words> and {<field> <words> or <field> <words>}

The middle search in the above expression is combined with the last search instead of the first one because of the braces.

Unecessary braces may be omitted. For example, the two expressions below have the same logical meaning.

When a field is of the type multiple-value (like, for example, the issn field, you can search for references that have a given number of values (for example, a given number of issn).

#<field> <number>

At the present time, this search option is only valid for the issn field.

Exemplos de expressões de busca são disponíveis na página Ajuda pelo Exemplo.

Examples of search expressions are available in the Help by Example page.