To find information about a topic, simply type in a few keywords. The more detailed your query, the more relevant your results.

Our search engine also comes with some advanced capabilities to help you find exactly what you're looking for. These capabilities are best shown with a few examples:

Translated: require FORTRAN, require scripting

Finds "FORTRAN Scripting", "FORTRAN scripting", and "scripting of type FORTRAN".

Does not find the lowercase "FORTRAN scripting", nor the abbreviated "FORTRAN script".

Translated: forbid FORTRAN, require scripts

Finds "Perl scripts", "Hollywood scripts", and lowercase "FORTRAN scripts".

Does not find "FORTRAN definitions" nor "FORTRAN scripts".

Translated: prefer FORTRAN, require scripts

Finds "Perl scripts", "FORTRAN scripts", and "FORTRAN Scripts".

Documents with both terms appear higher in the list.

Translated: require the phrase "FORTRAN scripts"

Finds "FORTRAN scripts".

Does not find "FORTRAN Scripts" nor "scripts of type FORTRAN".

Translated: require FORTRAN (case insensitive), require words starting with "script"

Finds "FORTRAN scripts", "FORTRAN scripting", "FORTRAN scripter".

The asterisk is a wildcard representing any four or fewer characters.

Translated: require Venus (case sensitive), require pictures, forbid planet, prefer images

First lists "pictures and images of Venus", then "Venus pictures".

Does not list lowercase "venus picture", nor forbidden "picture of planet Venus".

Translated: ignores common words like where, is, and the - requires words containing "frog"

Finds "frog", "frogleg", and "bullfrog".

To suppress the ignore feature, use quotes, as in "Where is the *frog*?".

Note on case sensitivity - only words or phrases containing an upper case character will be treated as case sensitive.  A search on "usa" will match "Usa", "USA", and "usA", while the term "USA" matches only its uppercase version.

The asterisk is a powerful search tool, but has some limitations. It cannot span words - that is, the query "powerfu*earch" would not match the first sentence of this paragraph - and it can represent at most four letters or numbers. To avoid overly broad searches, the asterisk can only be used in words or phrases which have at least three alpha-numeric characters. A search for "th*" would be ignored.