Query syntax

Queries can be defined by the following components (for more details, see Grammar).

Atoms

Atoms represent the basic components of each query (and can be queries on their own).

Type	Syntax	Description
Simple words	word without spaces	A normal word without special characters. Evaluated to `true` if the word is present in the search scope.
Word with wildcards	See Wildcards syntax	See Wildcards descriptions.
Expression	“first second third …”	A list of words separated by white spaces (words cannot contain wildcards). Evaluated to `true` if the exact expression if found the search scope.
Proximity	expression ~ distance	Expression ~ distance (e.g. “hello world” ~ 2). Evaluated to `true` if all the words are present in the search scope (in the same order) separated by at most distance words.

Warning

Note that all atoms are case insensitive and that’s intended.

Operator	Syntax	Description
AND	left AND right	Logical and operator. Both conditions must be satisfied.
OR	left OR right	Logical or operator. At least one condition must be satisfied.
NOT	left NOT right	Exclusion operator. Equivalent to boolean (left AND NOT right). To be evaluated to `true`, left must be `true` and right to `false`.

Search Scope	Keyword	Syntax	Description
Title	intitle	intitle: subquery	Subquery will be searched only in title.
Content	incontent	incontent: subquery	Subquery will be searched only in document content.
Global		subquery	Default scope. If nothing is specified, the subquery will be searched in both content and title.

Note

Search scope keywords are case insensitive (i.e. “INTITLE:”, “Intitle:”, and “intitle:” are equivalent).

Note

Another search scope (begin) will be implemented soon and will look up for keyword only in the beginning of document content.

Currently, there’s only two wildcards implemented, and their behaviors are very different from their equivalent in Regex.

Wildcard	Syntax	Description
`*`	word *	Will match everything or nothing. E.g. hell* would match hell, hello, helloo, and hellfires.
`?`	word ?	Will match one character or nothing. E.g. hell? would match hell, hello but not helloo neither hellfires

Priorities are defined in this order (from highest to lower):

Examples: