Boolean Instructions

Enter the word or words you want to find. Please note that searching all of MacroNet, while being the most complete, is likely both to give you results you may not be interested or it could stall. If the later occurs long then something is hanging in the server or it is overloaded. Just stop the action and do it again. This is a common occurance which makes it hard to access sites sometimes.

It is now possible to search using and & or. These now function as Boolean operators. To use this feature, place the words and or or between the terms. Just type them in as you would in plain English. The search program is flexible - you can combine any number of these to find what you want. If you leave a blank space between words it will interpret it as an and.

EXAMPLES:

find education : enter education in the box.
find environmental education: enter environmental education in the box - this brings up only entries with both words.
find URLs about either environmental education or environmental law: enter environmental and (education or law) in the box.
find URLs about environmental education but only those mentioning children: enter environmental education (child*) in the box
find URLs that contain world and worldwide: enter world* in the box, or *world will bring up underworld and world.
find URLs that contain phrases such as global warming by surrounding it with quotes "".

Enter a single word to find any search record that contains the exact whole word entered. For example, the search entry world would find records containing the word world, but not worldwide unless you use an asterisk for a wild card. For example, world economy will find entries containing both the word world and the word economy (but not necessarily next to each other or in that order unless you surround them with quotes). If you enter more than one word, it will find entries containing all of the words you entered, but none with just any single word. You must separate them with the word or.

To find parts of words, use an asterisk (*) to represent missing parts of the word. For example, if you enter world* it will match worldwide, worlds, etc. Similarly, *world would find underworld, etc.

Boolean Searches

For more control over the search query, you can use a boolean expression. If you enter the word or between two search words (with a space between each word and the or) it will find any record which contains either the first word, or the second word, or both. For example, apple or orange would find records containing the word apple or the word orange, or both.

If instead of the word or you entered and it would match only records which contained both the word apple and the word orange. Note that this would be the same as a simple search for apple orange because if the boolean commands are omitted, it defaults to assuming an and between each search word.

To find records which do not contain a particular word, place the word not before it. For example, not blue would find all the records which do not contain the word blue. You can combine the and, or and not commands, for example apple and not red would find records containing the word apple but not the word red.

For advanced use, you can use brackets to group the expression. For example, apple and (red or green) would find all records containing the word apple and either red or green (or both). If the brackets are omitted, the and command has higher precedence, so apple and red or green would find all records contain apple and red, and also records containing green.