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Matching Modes

Search keywords may be whole words or only a beginning fragment shared by many different words. For example, the search keyword "CO" exactly matches the abbreviation for the State of Colorado. When considered as a beginning fragment, however, CO is a common beginning element of several other indexable keywords, such as, COW, CORN, COMMENT, and COTTON. To facilitate choosing the most appropriate kind of matching algorithm for any particular query, there are two matching modes available: exact and open-ended.

An exact match can be requested by suffixing the search keyword with an exclamation-mark (!); this notation forces only exact matches between the search keyword and any indexed keywords to be recognized. For example, the query, /Hog!, will match only hog, not hogs.

By default, however, search keywords are matched with indexed keywords using an open-ended matching algorithm. Using this mode, a search keyword will match any indexed keyword which begins with the same text: any remaining text on the end of the indexed keywords does not matter. For example, /Hog will match Hog, Hogs, or Hogging.

Open-ended matching allows the user to supply only the first few significant characters of a desired word; if the desired word is very long or especially unique, this mode can save the user from excessive typing. This mode is also useful to match grammatically-related words, such as plurals and verbal conjugations, by giving only a single search keyword that comprises the common root of several related words.