Phrases searches.
A phrase can be
looked for by enclosing a number of terms in double
quotes. Example: "user manual" will look only
for occurrences of user immediately followed
by manual. You can use
the "Phrase" field of the advanced search
dialog to the same effect. Phrases can be entered along simple
terms in all simple or advanced search entry fields,
except "Phrase".
Proximity searches. A proximity search differs from a phrase search in that it does not impose an order on the terms. Proximity searches can be entered by specifying the "Proximity" type in the advanced search, or by postfixing a phrase search with a 'p'. Example: "user manual"p would also match "manual user". Also see the modifier section from the query language documentation.
AutoPhrases.
This option can be set in the preferences dialog. If it is set, a phrase will be
automatically built and added to simple searches in All terms and
Query language modes. This will not change radically the results, but
will give a relevance boost to the results where the search terms appear as a
phrase. E.g.: searching for virtual reality will still find all
documents where either virtual and reality appear,
but those which contain virtual reality should appear sooner in the
list.
Phrase searches can slow down a query if most of the terms in the phrase are
common. If the autophrase option is on, very common terms will be
removed from the automatically constructed phrase. The removal threshold can be adjusted
from the search preferences. This has become much less of a concern with recent Xapian
versions and the autophrase option is set by default.
Phrases and abbreviations.
Dotted abbreviations like I.B.M. are also automatically indexed
as a word without the dots: IBM. Searching for the word inside a
phrase (e.g.: "the IBM company") will only match the dotted
abbreviation if you increase the phrase slack (using the advanced search panel control,
or the o query language modifier). Literal occurrences of the word
will be matched normally.
