Pinker search syntax
When entering search words on the search line, you can tell Pinker precisely what to look for (bold type denotes what you would type):
- Entering search words: arm
- Entering logical ("Boolean") expressions of search words (arm and leg, arm or leg, arm not leg). Boolean expressions can be formed with and, or, not; parentheses are supported. Multiple search words are automatically interpreted as combined by “and”, so arm leg gives the same search results as arm and leg.
- Entering phrases ("move your arm")
- Specifying spelling ('ARM', the company stock symbol; 'Arm', trying to find capitalised versions of the word only)
Examples for search line:
- 'Upper/lower case Exactly AS spelled.' Case is matched, punctuation is ignored, wildcards are allowed
- "this sequence of words regardless of upper/lower case spelling"; punctuation is ignored, wildcards are allowed
- * any sequence of characters excluding white-space/punctuation
- ? any single character excluding white-space/punctuation
- Some characters cannot be found because they serve as wildcard symbols (e.g. ? *) or are used to separate words and are removed in the indexing process ( e.g. . , - @)
When processing topics, additional rules apply:
- Boolean expressions are not supported. Instead, you use Require, Exclude, Add_also, Suppress on entire topic branches.
- Multiple words are automatically interpreted as phrases without the need to use “…”. For example, clicking on topic tennis arm is equivalent to entering “tennis arm” on the search line.