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Search Help

Basic Search Form

The WebSearch form offers basic search features:

• Search field: Enter one or more keywords
• All webs flag: Check the flag if you want to search all public webs, not just the current web
• Scope: Select if you want to search the topic title, text body or both

The search is keyword based like in a typical search engine:

• Specify word(s) you want to find
• Multiple words form an AND search, intranet web service returns all pages that have the three words anywhere in the page
• Optionally specify plus signs for AND search, like intranet +web +service
• Enclose words in double quotes to form a literal search, like "web service"
• Specify a minus sign to exclude a word, like soap -shampoo
• Use double quotes if you want to search for a leading minus sign, like "-nowarn"
• Stop words are excluded from a keyword search:
  • Stop words are common words and characters such as "how" and "where", defined in the SEARCHSTOPWORDS setting in the TWikiPreferences
  • If you want to search for a word in the stop word list, prefix the word with a plus sign
• Example: To search for all topics that contain "SOAP", "WSDL", a literal "web service", but not "shampoo",
  enter this: soap +wsdl "web service" -shampoo

Advanced Search Form

The WebSearchAdvanced form offers more control over search.

TWiki supports three types of searches:

• keyword: The basic search type
• literal: Simple search where text is searched literally
• regex: A RegularExpression search for power users

TWiki's regex search is a set of regular expression patterns:

• Patterns are delimited by a semicolon
• An AND search is performed for the list of patterns
• An exclamation point preceeding a pattern indicates an AND NOT search; use it to exclude a pattern, like !web service
• If you want to search for a semicolon or an exclamation point, escape them with a leading backslash, like \!shampoo
• Example: To search for all topics that contain "SOAP", "WSDL", a literal "web service", but not "shampoo",
  enter this: soap;wsdl;web service;!shampoo

Formatted Searches

You can embed a nicely formatted search in a topic by using the %SEARCH{}% variable described in TWikiVariables.

Search Preferences

The TWikiPreferences has these settings:

• SEARCHDEFAULTTTYPE: Default search type for search forms which calls the search script
• SEARCHVARDEFAULTTYPE: Default search type for %SEARCH{} variable
• SEARCHSTOPWORDS: List of stop words

-- TWiki:Main.PeterThoeny - 18 Jan 2004