Search operators

Wildcards for the search

Search

Operator

Description

Example

Search for a term with unknown spelling

?

The ? operator replaces a letter in the search term with a wildcard.

Search: M?ier

Result: Meier and Maier

Search for placeholder or term with unknown spelling

*

The * operator is used to replace any number of characters within or at the end of a search term.

Search: Flow *

Result: flow chart, flow diagram, flow charts and flow diagrams

Search for wildcard or unknown term

?*

The ?* operator displays all objects of the selected search category in the search. A maximum of 10,000 objects are displayed.

 

Search for similar terms

~

The ~ operator can be used to search for a similar term:

  • Search term~0.1: searches for similar terms that are even slightly similar

  • Search term~0.9: searches for very similar terms

Search: assistant~0.1

Result: Research assistant

Operators for the logical operations of search words

Search

Operator

Description

Example

Combine search terms

OR

or

||

With the operators OR or || between two search terms, both or one of the search terms is searched for.

Bank OR Savings Bank

Search for matching search term

+

The operator + in front of a search term is used to search for exactly this search term.

When searching for several search terms, you can use the operator + in front of one of the search terms to specify that this term must appear in the search result.

+Bank Barclays

Search for multiple matching keywords

AND

or

&&

Using the AND or && operators between two search terms, searches for results that contain both search terms.

Bank AND Barclays

Exclude search terms

NOT

or

!

or

-

With the operators NOT, ! or - before a search term, the search term is excluded from the search.

jaguar -car

 

Search for exact matching keywords or operators

'...'

If search terms are enclosed in quotation marks, the system searches for exactly this sequence of terms.

If search terms containing operators are searched for with quotation marks, the operators are not interpreted during the search but included in the search.

'Object import and export'

 

If a searched term contains special characters, escape sequences must be used. Here, a backslash \ is placed in front of the special character searched for, e.g. "Anne\-Marie*".

The following special characters that occur in a search term can be replaced by an escape sequence:

  • Arithmetic signs: + -

  • Boolean characters: && || !

  • Brackets: ( ) { } [ ]

  • Other search operators: ^ " ~ * ? : \