Tips for Searching RFE/RL's Archives

Search Type

any of the words or all of the words - finds a list of words or phases

exact phrase - finds a single phrase
boolean – finds a structured group of words or phrases linked by and, or not, w/

Sort By

relevance - ranks documents based on the frequency and density of hits

date, name, size - sorts by these document features, instead of by relevance

Other Features

stemming - finds grammatical variations on endings, like applies, applied, applying in a search for apply

fuzzy searching - finds words even if they are misspelled

phonic searching - finds words that sound alike, like Smythe in a search for Smith

synonym expansion - finds word synonyms using a comprehensive English language thesaurus (dtSearch Web can also support custom thesaurus terms)


Special Characters

? matches any single character: appl? matches apply or apple
* matches any number of characters: appl*ion matches application

~~ indicates numeric range: 14~~18 looks for 14, 15, 16, 17 or 18

xfirstword matches the first word of a document:
apple pie w/10 xfirstword

xlastword matches the last word of a document:
apple pie w/10 xlastword

variable term weights

Click here for more detailed help