PCBoard 15.1 Demo/PCBoard v15.1 DEMO - Clark Dev. Co (1994) - Disk 1 of 1.imd/PCBDISK.EXE/HELP/HLPSRCH

Text File | 1994-02-14 | 11.6 KB | 247 lines

@X00
@X38┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────@X3B┐@X0B
@X38│ @X3EHelp: @X3FSearching For Text                                                   @X3B│@X0B
@X38└@X3B────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘@X03

      There are numerous places where PCBoard will ask you for some kind
      of search criteria for the text you want to scan.  In those areas
      you can simply type in a word or phrase or you may create much
      more complex searches by using boolean logic symbols in your
      request.

      The rules below apply at any prompt given where PCBoard wants you
      to tell it what to scan for so the following rules can be used
      whether you are scanning through the message base, the download
      directories, the users file or the caller logs.

      The prompt that you will usually see will resemble the follwoing:
@X0E
          Enter the Text to Scan for (Enter)=none?
@X03
      To begin with, you will be shown how to do some simple searches.
      From there, you will be shown how to do some more complex searches
      that involve Boolean operands.
@X0F
   Simple Searches : Single Word
@X03
      The simplest search that you can perform is the single word
      search.  You enter the word to search for and PCBoard will search
      the criteria you have specified for that word.  For example, if
      you are using the Z command then the file directories will be
      searched.  If you are using the TS command then the message base
      will be searched.

      For example, you may wish to search all messages in the current
      conference for the word monitor.  You would then type the
      following at a conference command prompt:
@X07
          TS
@X0E
          Enter the Text to Scan for (Enter)=none? @X07monitor
@X0A          Msg # to Begin Search from (1052-3904)?@X07 1
@X03
      At this point, you would see that the search begins for the word
      monitor.  PCBoard will display any message that has the word
      monitor in it.  While searching, PCBoard does not pay attention to
      the case of the word so it can be either upper or lower case and
      it will still be found.
@X0F
   Simple Seaches : Phrase
@X03
      Taking the single word approach one step further, you can search
      for a phrase that consists of one or more words.  If you found
      that searching for monitor was pulling up to many matches and
      consequently was not being effective, you may decide to search for
      something more specific like vga monitor instead.  This may help
      reduce the number of matches and help you find the messages you
      are after.  This time you would type the following at the
      conference command prompt:
@X07
          TS
@X0E
          Enter the Text to Scan for (Enter)=none? @X07VGA monitor
@X0A          Msg # to Begin Search from (1052-3904)? @X071
@X03
      At this point the search will begin again.  However, this time,
      only messages which have the word VGA immediately followed by the
      word monitor will be displayed.  When the message is displayed to
      you, PCBoard will highlight the match if your graphics mode allows
      so that you can see where the match occurs.
@X0F
Complex (Boolean) Searches
@X03
      Boolean operands allow you to perform more complex searches than
      you would be able to perform searching for a word or phrase. With
      Boolean operators you can tell PCBoard to display a match only if
      it meets certain conditions that you specify.

      An expression is made up of an operator which acts on one or more
      operands.  With text searches, your operators are the Boolean
      operators.  The operands are the word or phrases you are searching
      for.  Do not over-burden yourself trying to remember the
      difference between operands and operators as you will find that
      the examples will help you better understand the concept of
      Boolean text searching.  The following discusses each of the
      Boolean operators.
@X0F
   & - The And Operator
@X03
      The Boolean And operator enables you to search in disjointed mode.
      In other words, both operands must exist in the target (message,
      file description, etc.) but they do not have to be in consecutive
      order.  To help illustrate this let's say that you attempt to
      search for text editors that may exist on the system.

      Because you have no idea what the filename is, you decide to use
      the Z user command to search for text in the file directories.
      When prompted for the text to search for, you enter @X07text editor@X03
      because that is what you are looking for.  From there you begin
      the search, and you pull up a few programs that may interest you.

      The problem with this type of search is that you may have missed
      some files because you told PCBoard to find anything that had the
      text editor phrase in the description.  What you discovered later
      when viewing file directories is the following file description:

  @X0BTXED100.ZIP    @X0E168046  @X0A12-28-93  @X0BTexEdit v1.00 -- Utility you can use to
@X07                                   edit any text file.  Supports VGA text
                                   mode.  Includes mouse support.
@X03
      Obviously, this looks like a file that you would be interested in.
      Why did this description not show in your previous search? Quite
      simply, nowhere in the description is the phrase text editor
      contained.  Definitely your search is not catching all of the
      files you want to catch.

      This is not only where the Boolean And operator becomes useful but
      also where it makes sense.  If you had to sum up what you were
      looking for, you may say any file that can @X0Bedit text@X03.  The
      highlighted words are the key.  You want to find any description
      which has both the word text and the word edit somewhere in the
      description.  You do not know if the description will say
      something like "A utility to edit text" or if it will say "a
      wonderful text editor".  Therefore you could enter the following
      expression to search for:
@X0E
          TEXT & EDIT
@X03
      The & in the search string represents the Boolean And operator. If
      your translate the & into the actual word and it makes even more
      sense.  That would mean that you are searching for text and edit
      to be in the same description.  It does not matter in what order,
      just simply that they occur in the description to become a match.

      You can have as many Boolean operands as you wish in your search
      string.  For example, you could search for the following:
@X0E
          DISK & FORMAT & FLOPPY
@X03
      This would mean that the words DISK, FORMAT, and FLOPPY must all
      occur in order for a record to match.
@X0F
   | - The Or Operator
@X03
      Like the Boolean And operator, this operator enables you to search
      in disjointed mode.  With this operator only one of words or
      phrases need to be in the target (message, file description, etc.)
      to be considered a match.

      As an example, you may wish to search the message bases using the
      TS user command for any message that talks about hard drives.  You
      remember that some people call them hard drives and other may call
      them hard disks.  In a case like this, you would use the Or
      operator to find any message that matches either phrase.  You
      would type the following at the Enter the Text to Scan for
      (Enter)=none prompt:
@X0E
          HARD DISK | HARD DRIVE
@X03
      Any message that contains either the phrase hard disk or the
      phrase hard drive would be displayed to you.
@X0F
   ! - The Not Operator
@X03
      Sometimes you may not want to display all matching records.
      Instead, you may want to search all records which do not match the
      text you enter to search for.  This is precisely the user of the
      Boolean not operator.

      For example, you may want to search a directory that contains a
      bunch of GIF graphic images.  All of the descriptions in this
      directory contain the resolution of the file.  You decide that you
      do not wish to see the description of any pictures which are
      320x200.  If this was the case, you would type the following at
      the Enter the Text to Scan for prompt:
@X0E
          ! 320x200
@X03
      Any description which contained the phrase 320x200 would not be
      displayed to you because of the Boolean Not Operator ( ! ).
      Continuing on with the GIF examples, let's assume that you want to
      see all pictures on the system that have a resolution of 1024x768
      but you do not want to see any files that have swim in the
      description.  You could enter the following:
@X0E
          1024x768 &! SWIM
@X03
      If you read that out in English it says 1024x768 and not SWIM.
      This would display all file descriptions that have a 1024x768 in
      the description (denoting the resolution of the picture) and that
      do not have the word SWIM anywhere in the description.
@X0F
Using Parentheses To Group
@X03
      Remember in mathematics how you used parentheses in your searches
      to not only make your searches clearer and easier to understand
      but more importantly to control the order of operations to suit
      your need?  With Boolean operators you can do the exact same
      thing.  If you take the example that illustrates using the And
      Boolean operator one step further you can easily see how
      parentheses help group things together.

      If you recall, you were using the And operator to search for any
      description that contained both the words TEXT and EDIT.  What
      happens if someone chooses to use the word ASCII instead of TEXT
      when they enter their description?  To help you find this
      description, you could use parentheses to group items together.
      This may result in the following search string.
@X0E
          EDIT & (TEXT | ASCII)
@X03
      This will tell PCBoard to find any description that contains the
      word edit, and either the word text or the word ASCII.  If you
      did not use the parentheses then PCBoard would evaluate from the
      left to the right.  This means that it would only display files
      that contained both the words EDIT and TEXT or the word ASCII.

      While it appears to be a very subtle difference, it could make or
      break your search.  Remember the easiest way to do Boolean
      searching is to read out the search in English.  If you look at
      the previous example which uses parentheses you could read it as
      follows:
@X0E
          EDIT and either Text or ASCII.
@X0F
   Including The Boolean Characters In Your Search
@X03
      If you need to include any of the following characters in your
      search then you will need to use quote marks to use them properly:
@X0B
          &
          |
          !
          (
          )
          [space]
@X03
      Obviously these characters all have special meanings when involved
      in a search so you need some way of specifying them. For example,
      you may want to search for the phrase SMITH & JONES.  If you type
      that in as-is, the search would turn up anything with the word
      SMITH and the word JONES.  What you would do in this case is to
      simply surround then entire search phrase with quote marks as
      illustrated in the following:
@X0E
          "SMITH & JONES"
@XFF