Search Tips

The search box for some of the pages on this site have the option of using a keyword search or a regular expression search. Keyword searches are designed for words so if your search term needs to include symbols then you’ll need to use the regular expression search. For example, if you want to search for the command \@gobble then the keyword search will treat this as simply “gobble” whereas the regular expression search will treat it as “@gobble” (since \@ means a literal @). What you actually need is to enter \\@gobble as a regular expression.

Keyword Search

The keyword search uses MySQL’s boolean mode full text searches. This essentially means searching for a word or words according to their relevance. In the “Keywords” box you can use the operators listed in the table below:

Boolean Mode Operators
Operator Description
+ The word must be matched.
- The word must not be matched.
~ Invert the word's relevance.
< Decrease word's contribution to the overall relevance of the match.
> Increase word's contribution to the overall relevance of the match.
* Comes after the word it modifies and works like a wildcard.
() Groups words into subexpressions.

Other punctuation is ignored or treated as a word boundary.

Regular Expression Search

Some common regular expression markup is listed below.

Regular Expression Patterns
PatternDescription
. Matches any single character
[] Matches any of the characters (or range of characters) in the brackets.
() Forms grouping
| Alternate. For example: \\gls(text|name) matches \glstext and \glsname
? Matches zero or one instances of the preceding character/group. (Non-greedy ? not supported.)
* Matches zero or more instances of the preceding character/group.
+ Matches one or more instances of the preceding character/group.
{n} Matches exactly n instances of the preceding character/group.
{n,m} Matches n to m instances of the preceding character/group.
^ Start of the text being scanned.
$ End of the text being scanned.
\ The following character should be interpreted literally.