Search string concatenation and syntax

[phil@infomed.org]

Hi there,

Is it possible to concatenate search strings with different wild cards?
We are looking to do something like this:

(hypertoniebehandlung OR "behandlung der hypertonie") AND diuretik*

So this would find texts that include one of the 2 terms in brackets and they would also have the third term ("diuretika" or "diuretikum" or "diuretisch", etc)

Thanks for your help
Philipp

[David]

Boolean AND and OR are possible. So is an exact phrase and wild cards * and ?.
But you can't mix AND and OR in the same query. So you can't do the search in your post.

See this page for advanced search syntax.

[phil@infomed.org]

Thanks David, I had seen the page explaining the search syntax, I was just wondering if there were any workarounds, can you think of any?
If I understand correctly the AND and OR cannot be typed into the search query, this is only controlled by the 'all' and 'any' radio buttons, is this correct?

I.e. I can't enter the following as a search term:
hypertoniebehandlung OR "behandlung der hypertonie"

Is this correct?
Thanks
ph

[David]

Yes, this is correct.

We did a study many years ago on how people were searching online.
No one, except a few computer scientists, use Boolean AND and OR in searches.

Exact phrase, wild cards and negative searches are also rarely used.

Most people just type in one or two words.

[phil@infomed.org]

Got it thanks.

We're thinking of "helping" our users by formulating an initial query for them based on some of the content they are looking at.
So while our users would likely never enter something like (hypertoniebehandlung OR "behandlung der hypertonie") AND diuretik* it would still be a very useful search for many of our users landing on the corresponding article. By saving a search query for each article we would be able to guide users to other similar content.

So we're trying to figure out how we can accomplish that.