Evidence operators can be used to specify either a basic word search or
an intelligent word search. A basic word search finds documents that
contain only the word or words specified in the query. An intelligent
word search expands the query terms to create an expanded word list so
that the search returns documents that contain variations of the query
terms. For example, the THESAURUS
operator selects documents
containing the word specified, as well as its synonyms.
Documents retrieved using evidence operators are not relevance-ranked
unless you use the MANY
modifier. The following table
describes each evidence operator.
Operator name | Description |
---|---|
WORD |
Performs a basic word search, selecting documents that include one or more instances of the specific word you entered. |
STEM |
Expands the search to include the word you entered and its variations. |
THESAURUS |
Expands the search to include the word you entered and its synonyms. |
WILDCARD |
Matches wildcard characters included in search strings. Certain characters automatically indicate a wildcard specification. |
SOUNDEX |
Expands the search to include the word you enter and one or more words that "sound like", or whose letter pattern is similar to, the word specified. Collections do not have sound-alike indexes by default; to use this feature sound-alike indexes must be built. |
TYPO/N |
Expands the search to include the word you enter plus words that are similar to the query term. This operator performs "approximate pattern matching" to identify similar words. |