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Word filters: Boolean operators, stemming, and exact phrases
Hi All,
I would like to filter feeds using typical Boolean operators. I've read that negation is supported (if used with some other non-negated term). But what about disjunctions? I would like to filter a feed on X or Y. Does PostRank support the use of typical operators for this purpose: "OR" or "|". What about parenthesis? Can I do something like this: "((A OR B) (Y OR Z)) -C". Are exact phrases supported by quoting them? Are the words in the filter stemmed? For instance, if I create a filter using the word "craft", will "crafting", "crafts", "crafters", etc. also be included or only, literally the word "craft"?
TIA!
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Regards,
Travis Spencer
I would like to filter feeds using typical Boolean operators. I've read that negation is supported (if used with some other non-negated term). But what about disjunctions? I would like to filter a feed on X or Y. Does PostRank support the use of typical operators for this purpose: "OR" or "|". What about parenthesis? Can I do something like this: "((A OR B) (Y OR Z)) -C". Are exact phrases supported by quoting them? Are the words in the filter stemmed? For instance, if I create a filter using the word "craft", will "crafting", "crafts", "crafters", etc. also be included or only, literally the word "craft"?
TIA!
--
Regards,
Travis Spencer
I’m not satisfied
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Inappropriate?Hi Travis,
Thanks for the question. In short: several of those features are supported but it takes a bit to get passed some gotchas:
1. you can string keywords together with ands and ors and nots but they need to be uppercased AND and OR and NOT. You can use ! or - for NOT. You can use || for OR
2. The default operator joining keywords is AND.
3. You can group your boolean operators with parens: (x OR Y) AND B etc.
4. Words currently are not stemmed. We may look at adding query stemming in the future.
Here are some samples using the Wordpress Publisher Blog:
http://www.postrank.com/feed/e24f6d39...
1. cnn
Returns 4 results containing cnn
2. (cnn AND academy) OR linkedin
Returns 2 results for me today, one from each term
3. cnn NOT academy
Returns 3 results - excludes the one that includes academy
Hope that helps,
Jim
1 person says
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Thanks, Jim, for the answer. I appreciate it. I also just tested it, and phases in quotes are supported too.
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Thanks Again,
Travis Spencer
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?You beat me too the confirmation. They indeed should work.
We're working on exposing wildcarding with * and ? but do to the perf implications on our servers we haven't made that available yet.
Love to hear what you're building!
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?Hi Jim,
Thanks for the confirmation and help on this one. The additional wildcards would come in handy. I've also thought of a few more filter operations that would be useful:
* Filter by date
* Filter by author
* Filter by diggs
* Filter by number of Delicious bookmarks
* Filter by number of inbound links
* Filter by number of comments
* Filter by number other social networking criteria
For date, it would be helpful if it were possible to specify a range, relative dates (e.g., today, yesterday, this month, this week, this year), and calculated dates (e.g., today - 6 weeks). I know this sounds complex, but this is the sort of thing you get from RRD, Windows Desktop Search, and others. It's really nice when dates can be specified to such a degree.
Here are some examples of how such filters might look.
after:last month before:today (entries newer than one month ago)
after:4/1/8 before:last month (entries newer than April 1, 2008 but older than one month ago)
after:4/1/8 before:6/1/8 (entries posted between April and June 1)
after:last month (entries posted in the last month)
author:"Travis Spencer" OR author:spencer205 (entries written by me)
digg:10 (entries dug on DIgg 10 times or more)
delicious:15 (entries bookmarked in Delicious 15 times or more)
inbound-link-count: 4 (entries that have been linked to 4 times or more)
twitter:5 (entries that have been tweeted 5 or more times)
You could do a lot more too. With this sort of capability comes extreme power. When can I have this ;-)
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Regards,
Travis Spencer
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?Given all of this, why doesn't this return any results:
http://feeds.postrank.com/2af9561a511... ..q=geneva+OR+adfs
When this does:
http://feeds.postrank.com/2af9561a511... ..q=geneva
I’m frustrated
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