HtmlSearch Documentation: Options panel
Depending on your particular configuration, some of the choices described here may or may not be available.
The Options panel allows you to enter the main search parameters. It is divided into 3 main areas:
What to look for:
- Look for: enter the string(s) for which you are looking.
- To look for any word in a set, just indicate the words separated by any number of spaces.
- To search for a phrase, enclose the words in double quotes.
In this case, the spaces between the quotes are indeed significant.
- The AND boolean operator can be used between words or sets of words.
Make sure there is at least 1 space before and after AND, and that AND is in upper case.
- There is no NOT operator, e.g. you cannot search for 'blue AND NOT red'
- There is no associative operator such as parentheses, e.g. '(blue AND red) OR (green AND yellow)'
- It is possible to look for the word AND or double quotes, but that requires some pretty ugly constructs, so forget it.
- Examples:
- red blue
- finds pages that contains either 'red' or 'blue'
- "red blue"
- finds pages that contains both words together 'red blue'
- red AND blue
- finds pages that contains both words 'red' and 'blue', together or not
- red blue AND "light green"
- finds pages that contains the phrase 'light green' and either the words 'blue' or 'red'
- Match whole word only: check this box to match the 'Look for' words or phrases
only when they are distinct words, i.e. preceded or followed by a space, punctuation, arithmetic sign, bracket or parenthesis.
- Match case: check this box to match the case as used in the 'Look for' words or phrases.
Where to start:
This set of options may sometimes be found in the Advanced panel.
- Start from: enter the starting point for your search. This can be either a URL (e.g. 'http://www.somewhere.com/page.html')
or a file on your local disk (e.g. 'D:\somedir\somwehere\myfile.html'). Depending on your particular settings (e.g. CLASSPATH environment variable),
you may be restricted as to where you can start from.
- File: allows you to display the files on your local hard disk to select the starting file.
- Skip non HTML files: This option allows you to specify whether non-html files should be
searched. If a reference to a non-html file (e.g. .txt or .doc) appears in a page, the non-html file will be searched
for the string only if this option is unchecked. You can also specify types of files to skip in the
Advanced panel.
- OK to search on other hosts: check this box to allow the search to extend to
other hosts than the one you started from, e.g. if a link points to another host (e.g. 'http://www.somewhereelse.com/...'),
follow it. Depending on your particular settings (e.g. CLASSPATH environment variable),
you may be restricted as to whether you can follow links to other hosts.
Where to search:
This option allows you to select which set of pages to search in:
- All (new search): starts a new search: examine all the pages from the start URL
- Found last search: search only in the pages resulting from the last search.
That set is the one displayed in the lower list box (under the heading "Pages Found") at the end of the search.
It may be empty if the search did not find any matches.
- Found previous search: search only in the pages resulting from the older search.
That set is displayed in the lower list box when this option is selected.
This allows you to reuse an older set of results and start from set of pages found by that older search.