Search Help


The search capability for the SMALLnet Archive is pretty simple compared to the luxuriant capabilities of the big search engines like Google or AltaVista. But it gets the job done!

If you want to find all occurrences of some word in the Archives, just enter that word and press the Search button. As an example, you could enter

CO2
and the search would find all of the archive postings where CO2 was mentioned.

But suppose you wanted to find where the phrase

"CO2 Engine"
was located. You would enter the phrase in quotes, and the search would look for the phrase in the archive.

Perhaps you would like to find all of the places where CO2 and diesel engines were discussed. You would enter something like

co2 diesel
and everywhere the word CO2 or Diesel was found would be returned. Some postings would have CO2 in them, some would have Diesel in them, some would have both.

Now let's find those postings that would contain BOTH CO2 and diesel discussions. You would enter

CO2+diesel
and the search would list those postings which contain BOTH of the terms.

As you can see, it's fairly capable. And you can combine the capabilities to make for complex searches. As an example, perhaps you'd like to see all discussions containing CO2 and contibutions by Bill Lee. You would enter

CO2+"Bill Lee"
and back would come those postings. Not to say that it was Bill Lee that said anything about CO2, but at least they are in the same posting somewhere! :-)

The search is case insensitive: CO2 is the same as co2.

The search will find the postings for you, but you will have to use your browser's "Find" capability within a posting. I'm not sure where it is on every browser, but NetScape users will find it on their Edit menu.

If you have any further questions, send me e-mail:

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