Mailing List Archives Search
Mailing List Archives SearchSearch the complete archives of the IRIS mailing list since February 1994. Enter a few search keywords, or read the search tips to make advanced queries.
You might also like to find out who we are if you haven't already. Or you can take a look at the recent mailings distributed by IRIS.
Each search keyword may be preceded by the standard logical operators not, and, or or. If you search for "labor not party", you'll find all documents containing the word "labor" except those documents which also contain the word "party". If you type in "and labor and party and primaries", you'll find only those documents which contain all three search terms. The default value is or. Thus, a search for "labor party primaries" would return pages with at least one of the three terms. Keep in mind that a single IRIS mailing often covers more than one subject.
Altavista's shorthand notation works too. A search on "labor -party" is equivalent to the first example, and "+labor +party +primaries" will return the same documents as the second.
If a search term has at least one capital letter, like "jerusalEM", the search will be case sensitive with respect to that word - that is, only documents containing "jerusalEM" will be found. On the other hand, lowercase words like "jerusalem" will generate hits from "Jerusalem", "JERUSALEM", or "jerusalEM".
To group a collection of words, use quotes. For example, the query "Yitzhak Mordechai" (quotes included) would not generate a hit from "Yitzhak Rabin met with Mordechai Gur". Without quotes, the sentence would count. Boolean operators can also act on quotations: a search on '+the +kitten not "the kitten"' would return only those documents where "the" and "kitten" appear separately.
If you are searching for the name of a person, place or organization, remember that there can be many ways to transcribe Hebrew or Arabic names into English. If you can't find what you want, try a different spelling.
The search engine finds words, not strings. A search for "in" would turn up only that word, not "bin", "inside", or "acquaintance". To perform a string search, preface your term with the dollar sign - a query on "$in" would find all words lists above. Note that more complex wildcard searches using the asterisk are not permitted. Including the asterisk in your query will return a list of all files, but that's its only function.
These rules are based on Altavista's query syntax; a look at their Search Tips may prove useful.
Intermediate Search, Version 1.1 is Copyright 1997 (freeware) by Fluid Dynamics. The original Simple Search, on which this was based, was created by Matt Wright and can be found at Matt's Script Archive.
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Last updated: 3 September 1998