An operator represents logic to be applied to a search element. This logic defines the qualifications a document must meet to be retrieved. Many operators are available, and they can be classified by their type, as follows:

• Evidence Operators
• Proximity Operators
• Relational Operators
• Concept Operators
• Modifiers

Documents retrieved using evidence operators are not relevance-ranked unless you use the MANY modifier. Refer to "MANY" for more information. The following table briefly describes each evidence operator; see "Operator Reference" for more detailed descriptions.

Operator Name	Description
SOUNDEX	Expands the search to include the word you enter and one or more words that "sound like," or whose letter pattern is similar to, the word specified. Collections do not have sound-alike indexes by default; to use this feature sound-alike indexes must be built.
STEM	Expands the search to include the word you enter and its variations.
THESAURUS	Expands the search to include the word you enter and its synonyms.
TYPO/N	Expands the search to include the word you enter plus words that are similar to the query term. This operator performs "approximate pattern matching" to identify similar words.
WILDCARD	Matches wildcard characters included in search strings. Certain characters automatically indicate a wildcard specification.
WORD	Performs a basic word search, selecting documents that include one or more instances of the specific word you enter.

Proximity Operators

Operator Name	Description
IN	Selects documents that contain specified values in one or more document zones. A document zone represents a region of a document, such as the document's summary, date, or body text. The IN operator can be qualified with the WHEN operator, to search for a term only within the one or more zones upon which certain conditions have been placed.
NEAR	Selects documents containing specified search terms, where the closer the search terms are within a document, the higher the document's score.
NEAR/N	Selects documents containing two or more search terms within N number of words of each other, where N is an integer up to 1000. The closer the search terms are within a document, the higher the document's score.
PARAGRAPH	Selects documents that include all of the search elements you specify within the same paragraph.
PHRASE	Selects documents that include a phrase you specify. A phrase is a grouping of two or more words that occur in a specific order.
SENTENCE	Selects documents that include all of the words you specify within the same sentence.

Relational Operators

A number of relational operators are available for numeric and date comparisons, including the following: = (equals), > (greater than), >= (greater than or equal to), < (less than), <= (less than or equal to).

The following table briefly describes the relational operators are available for text comparisons; see "Operator Reference" for more detailed descriptions.

Operator Name	Description
CONTAINS	Selects documents by matching the word or phrase you specify with the values stored in a specific document field. Documents are selected only if the search elements specified appear in the same sequential and contiguous order in the field value.
ENDS	Selects documents by matching the character string you specify with the ending characters of the values stored in a specific document field.
MATCHES	Selects documents by matching the character string you specify with values stored in a specific document field. Documents are selected only if the search elements specified match the field value exactly. If a partial match is found, a document is not selected.
STARTS	Selects documents by matching the character string you specify with the starting characters of the values stored in a specific document field.
SUBSTRING	Selects documents by matching the character string you specify with a portion of the strings of the values stored in a specific document field.

Concept Operators

Operator Name	Description
AND	Selects documents that contain all of the search elements you specify.
ACCRUE	Selects documents that include at least one of the search elements you specify. The more search elements that are present, the higher the score will be.
OR	Selects documents that show evidence of at least one of the search elements you specify.

Modifiers

Operator Name	Description
CASE	Performs a case-sensitive search.
MANY	Incorporates the density of search words in the calculation of the relevance-ranked score.
NOT	Excludes documents containing the words or phrases.
ORDER	Specifies the order in which search elements much occur in the document.