Report:EAST/Search Syntax/Allowed Operators/Truncation or Wildcard Operators/Introduction
From Intellogist
| Report | Patent Coverage Map | Ratings | Comments |
| This search system report was created by the Intellogist Team and is available for viewing only. If you'd like to share your knowledge on Intellogist, please visit the Best Practices, Glossary, or Community Reports pages. Registered users may be notified of any substantial changes to this report by placing a "watch" on the Revisions page, which is the last page listed in the table of contents. To learn more about using the Intellogist "watchlist," see the Watchlist Help page. | |
  |
|
Introduction
Truncation operators are used as ‘wild cards’ that represent one or more characters in a term within a search query. EAST offers a fairly powerful set of truncation operators:
- $ - Can be placed at the beginning, middle, or end of a term and truncates anywhere from zero to unlimited characters. EAST can support simultaneous left and right truncation (also called SLART).
- Examples:
- $cycle returns results containing any of “bicycle”, “recycle”, “motorcycle”, etc.
- in$able returns results containing any of “indisputable”, “inseparable”, etc.
- kilo$ returns results containing any of “kilogram”, “kilometer”, “kilowatt”, etc.
- Examples:
- $n - Can be placed at the beginning, middle, or end of a term and truncates from zero to n characters where n is replaced with an integer.
- Example: build$2 returns results containing builder but not building
- ? - Can be placed at the beginning, middle, or end of a term and truncates exactly one character
- Example: adapt?r returns results containing any of “adapter, “adaptar”, or “adaptor”
- $? - Can be used to truncate one or more characters at the beginning, middle, or end of a term
- Example: col$?r returns results containing “colar”, “color”, “colour”, “collar”, ”colayer”, etc.
- ! - Can be placed at the end of a term to disable Plurals for that term, when Plurals is turned ON
- Example: With Plurals turned ON, a search for windows! would only return results containing “windows” and not “window”.
There is a 10,000 term truncation limit in EAST. This means that EAST will return a truncation overflow error after the 10,000th term is reached. For example, in a search using the unlimited truncation symbol $, a search for cat$ will abort the search at the 10,000th term "catalygt."
If truncation is used anywhere in a search, the ‘Plurals’ option will automatically be disabled for that search.
Editor's Note:The ability to use left-hand truncation when constructing queries in EAST represents a significant advantage over many competing search systems. This feature is especially useful when performing chemical searches, which often contain complex prefixes and suffixes.
