This page provides some help on doing searches using Ferret. If you are new to Ferret, you may want to skip the summary (the table below), and read the section called "Details & Long Examples" first, and then use the Summary section as a reference table.
The following table summarizes all the operations that Ferret can perform. The "Quick Example" column shows how the operation is to be entered. Clicking on the operation heading will jump to a more detailed explanation of the operation.
Ferret operates only on alphabetical characters. You cannot perform searches for numbers.
| Operation | Quick Example(s) | Operation | Quick Example(s) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single Word | word | Negation | ! word | |
| Required Words (AND) | word & werd & wird word werd wird |
Wild Characters | w?rd w* w[oei]rd |
|
| Optional Words (OR) | word | werd | wird | Priority (Parentheses) | word & (werd | wird) | |
| Proximity | word 10 werd | Phrase | "werd is the word" |
To retrieve documents containing a single, specific word, just type the word by itself:
word
The word must not contain punctuation, numbers, or other special characters.
To retrieve documents containing each and every word of a set, type the words separated by ampersands:
firstword & secondword & thirdword
or, the above may be abbreviated to:
firstword secondword thirdword
Note that the AND ( & ) operation does not take priority over the OR ( | ) operation; priority is strictly left to right, unless you use parentheses.
To retrieve documents containing at least one of a set of words:
firstword | secondword | thirdword
See the note above for the AND operation.
To retrieve documents with words within 10 words of each other:
firstword 10 secondword
Any number specified will remain in effect (left to right) until another number is specified. A number of "0" will cancel proximity checking. Note that proximity searches can be turned off when the index is generated and so may not be available on all sites.
To retrieve documents containing one word but not another:
required & ! disallowed
To retrieve documents containing a piece of a word:
onechar? | manychars* | rangechars[aeiou]
These patterns use the standard "globbing" characters as is common for matching filenames (i.e. the familiar "*.*" format).
? matches any single letter.
* matches any zero or more letter.
[abc] matches a single letter consisting of
either an 'a', 'b', or a 'c.'
To retrieve documents containing some required words and at least one of several optional words:
firstrequired & secordrequired & (firstoptional | secondoptional)
All word combinations are evaluated left to right unless surrounded by parentheses. Both AND ( & ) and OR ( | ) have the same priority.
To retrieve documents with a specific phrase:
"this is my phrase"
This will search for documents containing the specified words in sequence, ignoring punctuation and numbers. Thus, the above example is equivalent to specifying a proximity-number of 1, as follows:
this 1 is my phrase