Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 15:09:43 -0500
From: Grant Barrett
Subject: ADS-L Archive Search Improved
I've been futzing around with the ADS-L search archive and have come up with a
new, reliable, fast solution that I like. It also accepts multiple keywords to
refine searches.
It lets you enter keywords separated by spaces to find all of the files that
have all of your search words. For example, a search for "ebonics" alone would
return 71 hits, add "africa" and you narrow it to 46 hits, and add "oakland"
and you get a refined 15 hits.
Your search phrase would look like:
ebonics africa oakland.
There are no commas between the search words, just spaces, although it really
doesn't matter because the search engine ignores punctuation. The search engine
assumes you are searching for a fragment of a word. A search for "africa" will
return all hits for "africa" and "african". In the same way, a search for pop
will return all hits for "pop," "popik" and "popular," among other words.
The search engine is not case sensitive, and there does not seem to be a way to
exclude words from the results. Keyword order in the search field does not
affect the outcome of the search. It also ignores brackets, parenthesis, commas
and other punctuation.
There are still some tasks I would like to do, like break up each of the digests
into individual messages. Also, I am not happy with the way each document is
returned with "No Title," but there are more than 2400 individual digests (and
about 10,000 individual messages) in the archive and I do not relish the idea
of editing each one of the titles by hand. As soon as I can figure out an
automated solution, we'll fix that.
Finally, be aware that the archives are not complete. I have not added the
digests for April and May, but I will do so shortly.
If you have any questions, please ask them.
Grant Barrett
gbarrett[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dfjp.com