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I just did a forum search for "a" and "the" and got no hits..

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Jonathan50 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-25-07 02:44 PM
Original message
I just did a forum search for "a" and "the" and got no hits..
Is the search function broken, or am I just a clueless dweeb?
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DS1 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-25-07 02:44 PM
Response to Original message
1. It probably filters them out
and why would you want to stress the servers like that?
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Jonathan50 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-25-07 02:48 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. Because I had already tried to search for a serious subject ..
Multiple times and got zero hits..

I guess I'm a clueless dweeb.

Funny, I give out good advice on the computer forum on a regular basis.
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Make7 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-25-07 03:05 PM
Response to Reply #3
7. I've been having issues periodically also.
Last week I was searching for something using the 'simple search' here with no success. Finally I ended up using the Google, limiting the search to DU's domain name, and found one of the threads I was looking for. After that I attempted another DU search using the 'advanced search' capabilities and it turned up the proper results.

FWIW, each time I've had issues, I believe I was using the 'simple search'.

:shrug: Make7
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Madspirit Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-25-07 02:47 PM
Response to Original message
2. It Worked For Me
I put "the" in the search engine and got tons of links...the first being The Onion, which I thought was kind of cool.
Lee
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blondeatlast Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-25-07 02:53 PM
Response to Original message
4. Why on earth...? Kinda rough on the DU servers, for one--
and entirely pointless for another.

Is there something I'm not getting here?
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Jim__ Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-25-07 02:55 PM
Response to Original message
5. If you choose "And" logic, the search will return topics that matches the entire string.
Edited on Mon Jun-25-07 02:55 PM by Jim__
"And" is the default (on my machine anyway). If I understand the description of "and" logic, it sounds like you were searching for the string "a the".
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Jonathan50 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-25-07 03:00 PM
Response to Reply #5
6. Two seperate searches...
One for "a" and the other for "the".
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foo_bar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-25-07 03:14 PM
Response to Reply #6
9. to most search functions, 'a' and 'the' are considered stopwords
For instance:
The following words are considered “stopwords” and are not searchable terms in the US Patent Full Text Database. Although they are not indexed as search terms, they will be displayed in your search results.

a has such
accordance have suitable
according having than
all herein that
...

http://ftp.uspto.gov/patft/help/stopword.htm

Storing every isolated occurrence of 'the' would mean doubling the size and latency of DU's text database (or something ridiculous), in return for a feature of dubious importance (an expression that matches 99% of the time).

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Speck Tater Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-25-07 03:10 PM
Response to Original message
8. Google the phrase "stop words" (nt)
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Javaman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-25-07 03:23 PM
Response to Original message
10. Some extra time on your hands?
:shrug:
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Jonathan50 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-25-07 03:34 PM
Response to Original message
11. Well, It finally worked for me..
I didn't do anything different at all, all of a sudden I got hits on my serious search terms..

Thanks for everyone's help..
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