You can search for words or phrases and use wildcard expressions. Wildcard expressions allow you to search for one or more characters using a question mark or asterisk. The table below describes the results of these different kinds of searches.
| Search for | Example | Results |
|---|---|---|
| A single word | select | Topics that contain the word "select". (You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "selector" and "selection".) |
| A phrase | "new operator" or new operator | Topics that contain the literal phrase "new operator" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying "new AND operator," which will find topics containing both of the individual words, instead of the phrase. |
| Wildcard expressions | esc* or HT?? | Results for the first example include topics that contain the terms "ESC", "escape", "escalation", and so on. The asterisk cannot be the only character in the term. Results for the second example include topics that contain the terms "HTTP", "HTML" and so on. The question mark cannot be the only character in the term. |
Note: Select the Match similar words check box to include minor grammatical variations for the phrase you search. This feature only locates variations of the word with common suffixes. For example, a search on the word "add" will find "added," but it will not find "additive". This option is independent of other options or syntax. If you do a titles-only search, variations in titles will be matched. If you use quotes (or any other query operator) any variation of the word can appear; for example, "stemmed search" will also match "stemming search".