I just did a forum search for "a" and "the" and got no hits..

Jonathan50

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Mon Jun-25-07 02:44 PM
Original message

I just did a forum search for "a" and "the" and got no hits..

Is the search function broken, or am I just a clueless dweeb?

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DS1

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Mon Jun-25-07 02:44 PM
Response to Original message

1. It probably filters them out

and why would you want to stress the servers like that?

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Jonathan50

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Mon Jun-25-07 02:48 PM
Response to Reply #1

3. Because I had already tried to search for a serious subject ..

Multiple times and got zero hits..

I guess I'm a clueless dweeb.

Funny, I give out good advice on the computer forum on a regular basis.

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Make7

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Mon Jun-25-07 03:05 PM
Response to Reply #3

7. I've been having issues periodically also.

Last week I was searching for something using the 'simple search' here with no success. Finally I ended up using the Google, limiting the search to DU's domain name, and found one of the threads I was looking for. After that I attempted another DU search using the 'advanced search' capabilities and it turned up the proper results.

FWIW, each time I've had issues, I believe I was using the 'simple search'.

:shrug: Make7

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Madspirit

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Mon Jun-25-07 02:47 PM
Response to Original message

2. It Worked For Me

I put "the" in the search engine and got tons of links...the first being The Onion, which I thought was kind of cool.
Lee

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blondeatlast

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Mon Jun-25-07 02:53 PM
Response to Original message

4. Why on earth...? Kinda rough on the DU servers, for one--

and entirely pointless for another.

Is there something I'm not getting here?

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Jim__

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Mon Jun-25-07 02:55 PM
Response to Original message

5. If you choose "And" logic, the search will return topics that matches the entire string.

Edited on Mon Jun-25-07 02:55 PM by Jim__

"And" is the default (on my machine anyway). If I understand the description of "and" logic, it sounds like you were searching for the string "a the".

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Jonathan50

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Mon Jun-25-07 03:00 PM
Response to Reply #5

6. Two seperate searches...

One for "a" and the other for "the".

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foo_bar

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Mon Jun-25-07 03:14 PM
Response to Reply #6

9. to most search functions, 'a' and 'the' are considered stopwords

For instance:

The following words are considered �stopwords� and are not searchable terms in the US Patent Full Text Database. Although they are not indexed as search terms, they will be displayed in your search results.

a has such
accordance have suitable
according having than
all herein that
...

http://ftp.uspto.gov/patft/help/stopword.htm

Storing every isolated occurrence of 'the' would mean doubling the size and latency of DU's text database (or something ridiculous), in return for a feature of dubious importance (an expression that matches 99% of the time).

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Speck Tater

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Mon Jun-25-07 03:10 PM
Response to Original message

8. Google the phrase "stop words" (nt)

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Javaman

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Mon Jun-25-07 03:23 PM
Response to Original message

10. Some extra time on your hands?

:shrug:

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Jonathan50

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Mon Jun-25-07 03:34 PM
Response to Original message

11. Well, It finally worked for me..

I didn't do anything different at all, all of a sudden I got hits on my serious search terms..

Thanks for everyone's help..

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