This describes how to do searches in Pinkboard Personals. First you need to make sure you are using the Advanced Form to select your ads. Then you just type in a search expression in the field labelled search. The search expression is optional and if ommited will not be used.

The search uses the Apache Jakarta Lucene search engine. For more information of search expressions see the Lucene documentation.

Note: The searches help you find ads that are of interest, but they may also find ads that are not of interest, and omit some that are.

Terms

A search expression (also called query) is broken up into terms and operators. There are two types of terms: Single Terms and Phrases. A Single Term is a single word such as hung or music. A Phrase is a group of words surrounded by double quotes such as "long term". Multiple terms can be combined together with operators to form a more complex search expression. Multiple terms can also be used without operators to find expressions matching any term. eg newtown enmore erskinville

Fields

The data to be searched is separated into fields. When performing a search you can either specify a field, or use the all fields by default. You can search any field by typing the field name followed by a colon ":" and then the term you are looking for. The fields available are location, title and text. For instance you can search for location:wollongong.

Term Modifiers

Lucene supports modifying search expression terms to provide a wide range of searching options:

• To match any single character use a ?. eg f??k
• To match multiple (zero or more) characters use *. eg melb* will match any word starting with melb
• To perform a fuzzy search use a ~ following the word. (I haven't found this very useful. If you have a good example please let me know.)
• To finding words are a within a specific distance from each other specify the words in a phrase followed by a ~ and the number of words. eg "very hung"~5
• A term can be boosted in importance in the search by following that term with a ^ and the number to boost this term by. (This is only relevant when returning results in search order.) eg kiama^4 wollongong
• To only return searches that include a specific word prefix that word with a +. (I haven't found this very useful. If you have a good example please let me know.)
• To return searched that do not include a specific word prefix that word with a - eg perth -nor

Operators

Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. Lucene supports AND, OR. Note: Boolean operators must be ALL CAPS. If an operator is omitted between terms then OR is assumed.

The AND operator requires that all the words are present. eg tall AND blond*

The OR operator requires that at least one of the words is present. eg "big woman"~5 OR bbw

Grouping

Parentheses (round brackets) can be used to group expressions to form larger expressions. eg (danc* OR club*) AND sex