request regarding search syntax

augurk · Post by **augurk** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 10:19 pm

I would very much like an option to interpret spaces in seach als & , just like it works in google an such.
I find that i never seach for a "word1 word2" , but that the i almost always copy some seach terms from somewhere and paste them in the seach field. Then i always have to replace all the spaces with & . It's getting a bit tiresome, sorry for complaining

alex · Post by **alex** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 3:22 am

as to myself though when searching on google frequently i put double quotes around the phrase to look for what i need otherwise there are too many irrelevant results popping up right on the first results page.

if implemented, when looking for a phrase (when you encircle in double quotes) then the space would be treated as space, otherwise it would be treated as & unless it is the escape sequence \<space>. we would need to change wildmat (wildcard) specs as well (it is not impossible, e.g. i added double quotes in the past to search for whole word or exact phrase which is not a part of wildmats), to implement it technically is not a problem.

it would be an easy server side change, but we need to think it over again first, if it is google it doesn't automatically mean it makes the highest sense. or, it could be added as an option on the client side, few users i asked about this are ok with as it is now.

augurk · Post by **augurk** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 1:13 pm

I know that google isnt the highest sence,i just used it as an example.
I also know that the way it now works is the "proper" way.
It's just that, in practice, i find that 99% of the time i do a search, i mean for the spaces to be &.
Thanks for thinking about it.

alex · Post by **alex** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 3:19 pm

yes in short if to implement it then as an option on the client side since not only me but some other users i asked when typing several words mean the phrase search, so it is the client which needs to prepare the standard search pattern as an option choosen by the user somewhere in settings.

can you give an example when you need to look for several words like that? say if you look for "black lamp" you want to find "white lamp on the black table" or "black table lamp"?

augurk · Post by **augurk** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 5:46 pm

Hmm, i guess i use the search more sloppy than other users...
Or i use more precise search words

In a search for "black lamp" i would want both result you mention, i really dont care about the order. (I suspect the 'dont care about the order' is *really* against the "proper" way)
Let me say it in another way, if i look in my search history, i see not a single search that contains a space, it's either a single word or multiple words with &.
To say it simple, i have no need of spaces as literal spaces.
In a search for "lost s1e1" i would never want 'lost s1e1' or 'lost blabla s1e1' just simply any result that contains both 'lost' and 's1e1'.
This is dumbing down the power of the syntax, yes, but an option like 'treat spaces as &' would be ideal to turn it on/off when you want the full power.
Anyway, hope that clears it up, please by any means ignore it if i'm the only one mentioing this

Josef K · Post by **Josef K** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:45 pm

If it makes you feel any better, I'm forever tapping in a bunch of search keywords (search engine style) and realising what I've done before having to CTRL+Arrow back to swap spaces for ampersands. It would be nice to be able to enter search terms like this, with UE changing automatically to use the full syntax when wildmat operators are detected. It would be very nice to have this kind of behaviour on the fly.

alex · Post by **alex** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 1:42 am

maybe to add a check box into properties->general->search service, we have some room there after removing most of search service settings in v1.9.7, i made a note, if implemented after i'm done with the current work.

augurk · Post by **augurk** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 3:31 pm

Thanks, Alex.
One little remark to make it more confusing; when using double quotes, the seach should (ofcourse) be for that exact search text.
"black lamp" -> search for exact text
black lamp -> treat spaces as & (if option is set)

augurk · Post by **augurk** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 3:08 pm

Any future for this request?
It's been a while I asked and it still annoys me every dag.

alex · Post by **alex** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 9:35 pm

now it is more possible, i'm estimating how i can arrange a larger work chunk which in part would deal with some certain search refinements.

as you know the accent was on proper unpack implementation which took a lot of time to implement and it is even more important now to carefully allocate the time for the future work so it will be done with the same high quality without compromising anything, there are no grants for Usenet related development.

i didn't make my mind as to this specific refinement though, with tens of thousands of search requests being routinely done there were no other mentions of search syntax, since in itself the search syntax is more than sufficient and much more comprehensive than in other usenet search engines, both built-in or web based, not even close, we are talking rather about shortcuts, i need to think first since i didn't have time to dwell on it closely yet, ideally there should be no check boxes dedicated to a single user, but only [if changed] syntax which would conform what most of users find the most natural and there would be still a method (through the search syntax) not to sacrifice precise searches in favor of the "intuitive" way, the biggest problem one has with search engines is to find relevant results, so the more narrow focus can be defined the better and the syntax is very far from complexity of regular expressions, it is rather much closer to wildcards.

but in short i need to think about it first