Phrases and Proximity searches. A phrase can be looked for by enclosing it in double
quotes. Example: "user manual" will look
only for occurrences of user immediately
followed by manual. You can use the
This phrase field of the advanced
search dialog to the same effect. Phrases can be entered along
simple terms in all simple or advanced search entry fields
(except This exact phrase).
AutoPhrases. This option can be set in the preferences dialog. If it is
set, a phrase will be automatically built and added to simple
searches when looking for Any terms. This
will not change radically the results, but will give a relevance
boost to the results where the search terms appear as a
phrase. Ie: searching for virtual reality
will still find all documents where either
virtual or reality or
both appear, but those which contain virtual
reality should appear sooner in the list.
Phrase searches can strongly slow down a query if most of the
terms in the phrase are common. This is why the
autophrase option is off by default for Recoll
versions before 1.17. As of version 1.17,
autophrase is on by default, but very common
terms will be removed from the constructed phrase. The removal
threshold can be adjusted from the search preferences.
Phrases and abbreviations. As of
Recoll version 1.17, dotted abbreviations like
I.B.M. are also automatically indexed as a word
without the dots: IBM. Searching for the word
inside a phrase (ie: "the IBM company") will only
match the dotted abrreviation if you increase the phrase slack (using the
advanced search panel control, or the o query
language modifier). Literal occurences of the word will be matched
normally.
