Query

Single term query

The query specifies only one term for retrieving all documents which contain the term. e.g.,

grey

AND query

The and query retrieves all documents which contain both terms. For example,

galah and australia

will return all posts containing both galah and Australia.

The and operator may be omitted; terms which are separated by one or more spaces are assumed to be an AND query.

OR query

The or query retrieves all documents which contain either or both words. For example,

grey or gray

will return all posts containing Grey, grey, Gray, or gray, or combinations of both.

NOT query

The not query retrieves all documents which contain the first term and do not contain the terms after the NOT. For example,

macaw not cockatoo

Grouping

You can group queries by surrounding them by parentheses. The parentheses must be separated by one or more spaces. For example,

( grey or gray ) and african not timneh

will return all posts containing African Grey or African Gray which do not contain Timneh.

Phrase searching

You can search for a phrase which consists of two or more terms by enclosing them in double quotes like "..." or in braces like {...}.

{my cockatiel flew}

Phrase searching is not always accurate, and it produces spurious results occasionally.

Substring matching

The are three types of substring matching searching.

Prefix matching

inter* (terms which begin with inter)

Inside matching

*text* (terms which contain text)

Suffix matching

*net (terms which terminated with net)

Field-specified searching

You can limit your search to specific fields such as Subject:, From:, Message-Id:. It's especially convenient for Mail/News documents. e.g.,

• +subject:Macaw
  (Retrieving all documents which contain Macaw in a Subject: field)
• +subject:"Galah mortality"
  (Retrieving all documents which contain Galah mortality in a Subject: field)
• +from:Bart Van Hoyweghen
  (Retrieving all documents which contain Bart Van Hoyweghen in a From: field)
• +message-id:<199801240555.OAA18737@foo.bar.jp>
  (Retrieving a certain document which contains specified Message-Id:)

Notes

• Namazu ignores case in searches. For example, African Grey will return the same results as african grey
• Namazu can handle a term which contains symbols like TCP/IP. Since this handling isn't complete, you can describe TCP and IP instead of TCP/IP, but it may cause noisy results.
• Substring matching and field-specified searching takes more time than other methods.
• If you want to use and, or or not simply as terms, you can surround them respectively with double quotes like "..." or braces like {...}.