Words, Phrases, and Wildcards in Full-Text Searches
You can search for words or phrases and use wildcard expressions. The following table shows the search items, examples, and results of these types of searches.
| Search item | Example | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Single word | Select | Topics that contain the word select. You will also find its grammatical variations, such as selector and selection. |
| Phrase | "new operator" - or - 'new operator' |
Topics that contain the literal phrase new operator and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying a new AND operator, which will find topics containing both of the individual words, instead of the phrase. |
| Wildcard expression | Esc* | Topics that contain the terms ESC, escape, escalation, and so on. The asterisk cannot be the only character in the term. |
| Wildcard expression | 80?86 - or - 80*86 |
Topics that contain the terms 80186, 80286, 80386, and so on. The question mark cannot be the only character in the term.
You can only use the question mark (?) wildcard expression if the wildcard characters are numbers. |
| Wildcard expression | *86 | Topics that contain the terms 386, 486, x86, QEMM386, 8086, and so on. |
See Also
Using Full-Text Search | Navigation Using Shortcut Keys | Finding Information in Help
Last updated on Wednesday, April 14, 2004
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