Detailed explanation

The standard Boolean operators can precede each term - NOT, and, or. If you're looking for dogs NOT pizzas, you'll find all documents containing the word »dogs« - except the documents, in which also the word »pizza« occurs.
If you enter: and hot and dog andpizzas, you only find the documents containging all three search words (thus probably a pizzeria also selling Hot Dogs).

The default value is or. Therefore a search for hot dog pizzas deliveres pages as search result, which contain at least one of the three search words.

The abbreviated notation of Alta Vista functions likewise. A search for dog-pizzas corresponds to the first example, and +hot +dog +pizza produces the same result like the second example.

If a search word contains at least one uppercase letter, like e.g. parIS, the search considers the upper and lower case letters. I.e., only documents with »parIS&« are found. On the other hand the search for paris (everything in lowercase letters) delivers hits containing »Paris«, »PARIS« or »parIS«.

In order to combine several words into a group, you use quotation marks. E.g. the search for "Bill Clinton" (including quotation marks) would not result in a hit, if a document contains "Bill the Kid met former president Clinton". Without quotation marks however this would be a hit. Boolean operators can also be applied to terms in quotation marks: The search for +the +cat NOT "the cat" would deliver only the documents, in which »the« and »cat« are located in different postitions.

The search engine does find words, not character strings. A search for in would only deliver this word, not »binary«, »within«, or »being«. In order to execute a search for a character string, you place a dollar character ($) in front of your search term - a search for $in would find all words listed above. Please note that more complicated joker searches with the asterisk (*) is not permitted. If you include the asterisk into your search query, you simply get a list of all files - and that is its only function.

These rules are based on the query syntax of Alta Vista; a look at their search tips may prove as useful.