Help on WAIT Searches

Syntax

For the most part, assume that you can place random text in the input fields in the form. Just do not use 'and', 'not', and the letters '(', '=', and ')'. The more words you provied the better is the chance to find what you are looking for.

Fields

As you have seen you can enter text in 4 fields: Name, Synopsis, Text, and Author. All but Text correspond to the POD section with the same name.

So just entering perlrun, in the Name field, you should only get one hit: The perlrun manual in the perl distribution. Try it.

There are some differences what is considered as a hit depending on which section is searched. The most notable section is the Author field, where a phonetic match is sufficient for a hit. If you enter 'ilia' you will find 'Ilya' also. Don't be worried about to much hits. The hits which match literal will aways be ranked above the phonetics matches. Try it.

The Text fields is special in that words there are searched in any POD section. If you are lazy, just enter your text there. The text field can also be used for more elaborate searches. See below.

Advanced queries

You can enter complex boolen queries using the 'and' and the binary 'not' operator.
    mortality not perlguts.
    
Two words are implicite combined with or if no other operator is given. You can use '(' and ')' for grouping.
    (html http) and encoding.
    

Other POD sections

You can use the Text field to search in other fields not supported by the form. The following sections are known by WAIT: 'synopsis', 'name', 'bugs', 'author', 'example', 'description', 'text', 'environment'

The 'text' sections is a fake section which takes everything that did not make it to another section. You can specify the field to search using '='. Any unambiguous truncations of field names are valid:

    env=PERL5DB.
    
If you feel that this help is too short now, You are welcome to contribute additions ;-)

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Ulrich Pfeifer