Syntax - What is the difference between < > Grouping and " " Search for an exact phrase?

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Stamimail
Posts: 1121
Joined: Sat Aug 31, 2013 9:05 pm

Syntax - What is the difference between < > Grouping and " " Search for an exact phrase?

Post by Stamimail »

What is the difference between:
< > Grouping
and
" " Search for an exact phrase
?
therube
Posts: 4561
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 6:48 pm

Re: Syntax - What is the difference between < > Grouping and " " Search for an exact phrase?

Post by therube »

"red and blue"

Looks for the "string", red and blue.
Diego's painting was an abstract of red and blue colors.

<red and blue>

Looks for the words, red and blue.
"The blue ocean looked beautiful against the red sun, but this only happens when there is a full moon and a solar eclipse"
Stamimail
Posts: 1121
Joined: Sat Aug 31, 2013 9:05 pm

Re: Syntax - What is the difference between < > Grouping and " " Search for an exact phrase?

Post by Stamimail »

Thanks, I was a little bit confused. There is no one rule to OR or to Group...

ext:bat;cmd;exe;msi;msp;scr
regex:"gr(a|e)y" <== regex:gr(a|e)y
filelist:<fn1|fn2|...> Search for a list of file names.
filelist:"C:\Windows\explorer.exe|C:\Windows\notepad.exe|C:\Windows\winhlp32.exe"
The OR operator has higher precedence in Everything 1.4.
This means terms with an OR (|) operator are searched first before terms with an AND ( space ) operator.

Everything treats *.vbs c: | *.vbs d: as *.vbs (c: | *.vbs) d:

Please use < and > to group terms, for example:
<*.vbs c:> | <*.vbs d:>
filelist:"C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe|C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exe"
NotNull
Posts: 5142
Joined: Wed May 24, 2017 9:22 pm

Re: Syntax - What is the difference between < > Grouping and " " Search for an exact phrase?

Post by NotNull »

Grouping is especially useful for combining multiple search-queries where AND and OR are used. Example:

Code: Select all

query 1 OR query2 AND query3 or query4
where query could be any of the examples you mentioned (filelist: ext: regex:)

This would expand to: "the result of query 1 OR query2" AND "the result of query 3 OR query4".
This is the same as:

Code: Select all

<query 1 OR query2>  AND <query3 or query4>

If you would know the result of "the result of qurey1" OR "the result of query2 AND query3" OR "the result of query4", you could change the Operator precedence from "OR > AND" to "AND > OR" ... or .... use grouping:

Code: Select all

query 1 OR <query2 AND query3> OR query4

So .. using grouping, you can easily change the order in which queries are evaluated.
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