235605 - Quicksearch features: boolean operators

Status: NEW

(Bugzilla :: Query/Bug List, enhancement, P4)

Description

[Andreas Franke (gone)]

See bug 234464 for the context of this bug.

This is about how to build queries using boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT).


Google (see http://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html ):
===========================================================

* Automatic "and" Queries

* "OR" Searches

  Google supports the logical "OR" operator. To retrieve pages that include
  either word A or word B, use an uppercase OR between terms, e.g.:
        vacation london OR paris

* "-" Searches

  You can exclude a word from your search by putting a minus sign ("-")
  immediately in front of the term you want to avoid.


Quicksearch (see http://www.squarefree.com/bugzilla/quicksearch-help.html ):
============================================================================

* Automatic "and" Queries

  You _can_ put an uppercase AND between search terms, but you don't have to.

* "OR" Searches

  Quicksearch supports the logical "OR" operator, too.  The query
        style OR CSS border
  is parsed as (style OR CSS) AND border .  For convenience, a comma can be 
  used to separate alternative terms, too:  
        style,CSS border   
  is equivalent to the above query.
  
  As a generalization, the comma notation works with prefixes, too:
        component:admin OR component:general
  is a legal query which can be abbreviated as
        component:admin,general
  to avoid repetition of the same prefix.  Similarly, repetition of the same
  value can be avoided as in
        reporter,cc:[e-mail]
  which expands to
        reporter:[e-mail] OR cc:[e-mail]
  These two features can be combined, as in
        summary,description:crash,hang,freez

* "-" Searches

  Excluding a search term by prefixing it with a minus sign is supported by
  Quicksearch, too.  As a generalization, the minus sign can be used to express
  the logical negation of any "complex word", e.g.
        -resolution:INVALID,WONTFIX
  expands to
        NOT resolution:INVALID AND NOT resolution:WONTFIX
  (An uppercase NOT before a term is equivalent to the minus sign.)

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

Both Google and QuickSearch support | as a shortcut for OR.  (QuickSearch also
supports comma, which is slightly more convenient.)

Neither Google nor QuickSearch supports parenthesized boolean expressions. 
Queries are always conjunctions of disjunctions, like SAT problems.  I haven't
found this limiting in QuickSearch.

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

Just came across a situation where I needed this. (And I couldn't fall back to "boolean charts" in "advanced search" because that's broken in its own special way.)

Comment 3

[Jesse Ruderman]

(Filed bug 966857 on the boolean-charts bustage.)