PSIsafe User Guide: Search: Advanced Search Options

Overview

The goal of this article is to give advanced explanations of certain functions in Document, Folder, and Full Text search options. For more information, see the following articles:

PSIsafe User Guide: Search

PSIsafe User Guide: Transitioning from PSIsafe 11 to PSIsafe 12

Wildcard Searching

A search word can contain the wildcard characters * and ?. A ? in a word matches any single character (including a Unicode character), and a * matches any number of characters. The wildcard characters can be in any position in a word. For example:

        appl* would match apple, application, etc.

        *cipl* would match principle, participle, etc.

        appl? would match apply and apple but not apples.

        ap*ed would match applied, approved, etc.

Use of the * wildcard character near the beginning of a word will slow searches somewhat.

Fuzzy Searching

Fuzzy searching will find a word even if it is misspelled. For example, a fuzzy search for apple will find appple. Fuzzy searching can be useful when you are searching text that may contain typographical errors, or for text that has been scanned using optical character recognition (OCR). You can adjust the level of fuzziness from 1 to 10.

Phonic Searching

Phonic searching looks for a word that sounds like the word you are searching for and begins with the same letter. For example, a phonic search for Smith will also find Smithe and Smythe. Phonic searching is somewhat slower than other types of searching and tends to make searches over-inclusive. (Author’s note: Why isn’t phonic spelled with an “f”?)

Stemming Searching

Stemming extends a search to cover grammatical variations on a word. For example, a search for fish would also find fishing. A search for applied would also find applying, applies, and apply.

The number of maximum documents limits how many results are displayed. It does not limit the number of documents searched. The documents displayed are those most relevant to the search. PSIsafe will not display more than 1000 results for a search. If a user cannot find the document they want within 1000 results, it is suggested more search terms be included to further limit the result set.

Numeric Range Searching

A numeric range search is a search for any numbers that fall within a range. To add a numeric range component to a search request, enter the upper and lower bounds of the search separated by ~~ like this:

        apple w/5 12~~17

This request would find any document containing apple within 5 words of a number between 12 and 17.

Regular Expression Searching

Regular expression searching provides a way to search for advanced combinations of characters. A regular expression included in a search request must be quoted and must begin with ##. Examples:

        Apple and "##199[0-9]"

        Apple and "##19[0-9]+"

A regular expression must match a single whole word. For example, you could not search for "apple pie" with a regular expression "##app.*i.e.” A regular expression is like the * wildcard character in its effect on search speed: the closer to the front of a word the expression is, the more it will slow searching. "Appl*" will be nearly as fast as "Apple", while "*pple" will be much slower.

Variable Term Weighting Searching

By default all words in a request count equally in counting hits. You can change this by specifying the relative weights for each term in your search. Request, like this: apple:5 and pear:1. This request would retrieve the same documents as apple and pear but, full text search would weight apple five times as heavily as pear when sorting the results.

Weights can also be applied to a field in a Boolean search, like this: (Description: 5 contains (apple and pear)) or (author: 2 contains ("John Smith")

Custom Columns Displayed In Folder Search

Allows for custom columns (Labels 1 thru 5) to be displayed when performing a folder search.

Search by File Size

Allows user to search documents based on file size.
Search> Document Search> Advanced

        Example: If you are looking for documents with file size between than 1 MB and 2 MB.
        Set Filter By = File Size (KB)
        Set Condition = Less Than Or Equal
        Set Value = 2000
        Operator = AND
        Add above entry

        Set Filter By = File Size (KB)
        Set Condition = Greater Than Or Equal
        Set Value = 1000
        Operator = AND

Export List of Selected Documents

After performing a document search, the user can select any combination of documents in the results list
and export the column data as a csv for only the selected documents.