Complex Query Language Search Expressions

In Advanced Search, you can specify and perform more complex searches than you can using Basic Search. In Advanced Search, you can join more than four search terms, use other operators in addition to And and Or, and specify the order in which to evaluate expressions.

Using logical operators and parentheses:

You create more complex queries using IEEE Xplore® query language by joining search expressions with logical operators and using parentheses to group and prioritize parts of the query. Although parentheses are not always required, they help you to see the structure of your query more clearly, and may make it easier for you to edit the query.

Here is an example of a more complex query:

(<or>(electro*,mech*,mag*) <and> (<or>(phys*, chemical, synthetic)) <or> (<thesaurus>engine)

With some operators, like the first two <or> operators in the example, you can enter the operator only once and follow it with a list of the search terms it operates on. This form makes it a little easier to create and read search expressions.

Using other operators and modifiers:

In Advanced Search, you have access to operators you cannot use in Basic Search, such as <near>, <order>, and <many>.

Here is an example of a complex query using these operators:

<many>(<order>(<and> (moon, man, vehicle)))

First, a record must contain some variation of all three terms before it can match. Then, those three terms must appear within the record in the order shown. After all matching records are found, IEEE Xplore® assigns a score to each one, so that you can sort them by score and view together those with dense occurrences of these terms.