Appendix E, Using the Help
| About the Help System | |
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Interpreting the Search Results |
Appendix E, Using the Help |
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Punctuation, Spaces, and Special Characters
Searching is the best way to find information in the Help. Click Search in the Navigation frame to access the Search tool.
To enter a query, just type in a few words and press Enter (or click the Search button) for a list of relevant topics.
Note: In Netscape 4.7 on IRIX, the Search tool does not show a 'processing' icon. After you click Search, the 'Search Results' heading appears. It takes a few seconds for the list of results to appear below the heading.
After a few seconds, the results of the full-text search appear below the Search text box. To display a topic, click its title in the search results. If a search result is a chapter (or appendix) title, click the link to display the list of topics in the selected chapter (or appendix). To learn more about the results, see Interpreting the Search Results.
After you display a topic, you can find the search terms on the page using the browser's Find on This Page command. Click in the topic frame to set focus for the Find on This Page command. In most browsers, the shortcut for this command is Ctrl+F.
Note: If you show the Contents or Index after performing a search, you can return to the search results by clicking the browser's Back button. In most browsers, the shortcut for the Back command is Backspace. (Click Back twice for the Navigation menu to appear correctly. See Using the Back Button for details.)
By default, the Search tool only returns topics that include all of your search terms. For example, type cutting splicing to find topics where both the words cutting and splicing appear.
Do not include the word and between terms. The order in which the terms are typed will not affect the search results. To restrict a search further, include more terms.
The Match Any Phrase option is used for "or" searches. See Using the Search Options.
Search for complete phrases by enclosing them in quotation marks. Words enclosed in double quotes will appear together in all results exactly as you have entered them.
For example, type "colour warper" to find topics where the word colour appears followed by a space and then the word warper.
The basic search is NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. If you want your search to be case sensitive, show the search options and enable the Case Sensitive option. See Using the Search Options.
A search term can include punctuation and special symbols. For example, type init.cfg to find this filename. Note that there are no wildcard characters like ? or *.
Leading and trailing spaces are stripped off your search terms (unless the search term and leading or trailing space is inside quotation marks). If you type two or more consecutive spaces, the Search tool removes the extra spaces.
To search for special characters, use these codes. Type (r) to search for the registered trademark ® symbol. Type (tm) to search for the trademark TM symbol. Type (c) to search for the copyright © symbol. Type -- to search for the emdash (--) symbol. Type & followed by #34; to search for a double quotation mark (").
The Search tool does not have a word stemming feature. However, you can add a partial word to the search text to search for root words. For example, type chang to find the word change, changed, and changing.
The Search tool does not remove stop words from your search phrases. A stop word is a very common word such as "the", "of", "as", and "when".
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