Simple query syntax characters
The following list describes the characters that you can use in search applications to refine query results.
Free style query syntax
Free style query syntax is used to describe queries that do not have an explicit interpretation and for which there is no default behavior defined. The default implementation for this type of query is to return documents only if they match all terms in the free style query.
Query: computer software
Result: his query returns documents that include the term computer and the term software, or something else depending on the semantics of the implementation.
+
Precede a term with a plus sign (+) to indicate that a document must contain the term for a match to occur.
Query: +computer +software
Result: This query returns documents that include the term computer and the term software. The plus sign is not needed because documents are included in the search results only if they match all terms in a free style query.
-
Precede a term with a minus sign (-) to indicate that the term must be absent from a document for a match to occur.
Query: computer -hardware
Result: This query returns documents that include the term computer and not the term hardware.
=
Precede a term with the equal sign (=) to indicate that the document must contain an exact match of the term for a match to occur. (Lemmatization is disabled.)
Query: =apples
Result: This query returns documents if and only if they include the plural term apples.