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Boolean Search Terms

The member directory can use boolean search terms. The following are a list of terms and their uses. Multiple terms can be used in any one search, separate each term with a space. Any reference word should be replaced by the exact search term. All searching is done case insensitive.

Term	Action
word	This is an optional word. (Logical OR) It will return rows if the word exists in any fields. If this is the only search term, it is the same as using as single word and + (see below).
+	A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in every row returned.(Logical AND) Example: +george This will return only rows with "george" in them.
-	A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in any row returned. (Logical NOT) Example: -george This will return only rows without "george" in them.
*	An asterisk is the truncation operator. This returns anything that begins with this word or characters. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word, not prepended. Example: app* will return things like app, apple, apples, and applause, but not sappy or Lapp.
> <	These two operators are used to change a word's contribution to the relevance value that is assigned to a row. The > operator increases the contribution and the < operator decreases it. See the example below.
( )	Parentheses are used to group words into subexpressions. Parenthesized groups can be nested.
~	A leading tilde acts as a negation operator, causing the word's contribution to the row relevance to be negative. It's useful for marking noise words. A row that contains such a word will be rated lower than others, but will not be excluded altogether, as it would be with the - operator.
"	A phrase that is enclosed within double quote ( " ) characters matches only rows that contain the phrase literally, as it was typed.

The following are a few additional examples:

• george frank — Find rows that contain at least one of the two words.
• +george +frank — Find rows that contain both words.
• +george frank — Find rows that contain the word "george", but rank rows higher if they also contain "frank".
• +george -frank — Find rows that contain the word "george" but not "frank".
• +apple +(>turnover <strudel) — Find rows that contain the words "apple" and "turnover", or "apple" and "strudel" (in any order), but rank "apple" and "turnover" higher than "apple" and "strudel".
• app* — Find rows that contain words such as app, apple, apples, and applause.
• "Richard Lion Heart" — Find rows that contain the exact phrase "Richard Lion Heart" (for example, rows that contain "King Richard Lion Heart" but not "Richard the Lion Heart").

Explaination of examples and terms is mostly taken from the mysql documentation library at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Fulltext_Boolean.html.