XLPAT Search Documentation
> PREn – For searching words in ordered manner i.e. in the exact order as given in the input query
Eg. Title: (Agriculture PRE1 machine) will find results in which the word agriculture is always preceding the word machine
> NEARn – For searching words in an unordered manner
Eg. Title: (Agriculture NEAR3 machine) will find results in which the word machine is in proximity to word agriculture in either left or right order by 3 words)
Note:
> In case of a search query with wildcard operator (*) and proximity operator (NEARn/PREn), if the result set exceeds 10000 query combinations, the query gets optimized; user receives a message to either refine the query or run an optimized query
Eg: Query – text:(compound* NEAR5 mix*) gets optimized to text:((compound OR compound? OR compound??) NEAR5 (mix OR mix? OR mix??))
> In a search query in which a phrase (without quotes) is being searched in proximity to another word, the system reads the words in the phrase as it is in the same order (without quotes)
Eg: Query – text:(machine chassis NEAR10 work), is searched in a format such as: text:((machine PRE1 chassis) NEAR10 work)
> Proximity operators are not applicable to search queries with alphanumeric search terms
Eg. Title: (Wireless NEAR5 5g) will return zero results. In this case, 5g is an alphanumeric term.
2. Wildcard Operators
> ? : replaces only one character and can be used in the middle and at the end of a word
> * : replaces an unlimited number of characters in the term
Note:
> ? cannot be used at the beginning of a word
To search for a word with 2 wildcard characters, use ‘?’ operator twice to cover all cases such as: ttl: (print OR print? OR print??); only print? will not cover print or printed
> * cannot be used in the middle of a word
3. Search within Sentence
Nears : Finds search terms that appear within the same sentence
4. Search within Paragraph
Nearp: Finds search terms that appear within the same paragraph