Supported Input

Fundamental Operators

The code supports five basic operators:

• AND
• OR
• NOT
• (
• )

Shorthand Operators

The code also supports a shorthand syntax similar to ebay's boolean syntax; the two syntaxes can be intermixed at the users discretion:

• ' ' [space] represents AND
• ',' [comma] represents OR
• '-' [hyphen] represents NOT

Allowed Characters

As it exists, the code allows alphanumeric characters as well as the special characters '.', '_', and '-', providing they are not used as the first character in a subject word. Regardless of the characters allowed in the code, their are certain limitations imposed by MySQL when it runs the fulltext searches.

Nesting, Grouping, Logical Precedence

The code is also capable of nested Boolean statements to any plausible depth (that which MySQL can handle) via the use of parentheses. These characters can also be used to force the order of evaluation of any given statement. Remember that the AND operator has precedence over the OR operator.

For example, families (traditional, nontraditional) -health
Will be parsed as: families AND (traditional OR nontraditional) AND NOT health.