Unlike searching on Google, the MySQL database this collection is based on has less flexibility in interpreting the search terms entered. For better constructed search entries and better results read on...
Regex is an ancronym for "regular expressions," is a means of specifing a match pattern in text. It is an extremely powerful and amazing method for searching and manipulating text. You don't need to be a computer scientist to understand its fundamentals in order to search effectively. A search pattern is created by means of adding or replacing characters with symbols in the string to be matched. There are two database search modes for this collection: with regex and without regex.
Without the "Use regex patterns" checkbox selected on the Seach page a much simpler and perhaps less effective means of search term designation is available with the % (percent) and _ (underscore) symbols.
| Symbol | Usage | Example |
|---|---|---|
| % | Wild card. Similar to the * symbol in specifying file names, the percent symbol matches one or more characters. | "Jane%" matches "Janey and Roy Zellick" |
| _ | Match any one character. The underscore symbol matches any one character similar to the ? symbol when specifying file names. | "J_ne" matches "Jane" or "June." |
With the regex option one can search for any word occurence in a sentence. For example, the word "tango" matches titles "The Tango" and "The Story of the Tango."
| Symbol | Usage | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ^ | Match from the beginning. | "^The" matches all titles that begin with the word "The." |
| $ | Match to the end. | "man$" among authors matches surnames Perryman, Herman, Freeman, Gershman, Bowman, and Koopman. |
| * | Zero or more characters. | <"Danc*" matches "Dance" or "Dancing."/td> |
| ? | Zero or one characters. | <"Bow?" matches Bow, Bows, or Bowl. |
| . | Any single character | "J.ne" matches "June" or "Jane"/td> |
For more matching symbols and combinations visit MySQL | Regular expressions.
More elaborate ways to search the database exists by composing search conditions in SQL querys or regex pattern matching. Those means are outside the scope of this project but is only a question away to the developer.