DialogWeb Help: The SELECT Command

The SELECT command retrieves a set of records that contains your search term(s). When you SELECT a term, all Basic Index fields are searched. You can enter up to 240 characters, including spaces and punctuation, in a single SELECT statement. You can SELECT a single search term or multiple search terms that are connected by logical or proximity operators. You can also SELECT a search term from a specific database, for example, s dog from 470.

To SELECT a term from an Additional Index field, enter a field prefix code followed by an exact search term. For example, enter s au=smith, jane. Because Additional Index searching requires the use of exact terms including punctuation, it is recommended that you use truncation or EXPAND your term before entering a SELECT statement.

Single Word SELECT Statements
In a SELECT statement, you may enter a single word, a number, or an alphanumeric expression as your search term. Truncation can be used to search on a word stem or incomplete term. There are nine "stop" words that should not be included in your search. They are: an, and, by, for, from, of, the, to, and with. Punctuation within a search term, for example a hyphen or an apostrophe, must be replaced with a proximity operator, such as the (w) or (n) operator.

Multiple-Term SELECT Statements
If you want to enter more than one search term in a SELECT statement, you must insert logical or proximity operators between the terms. The results of a multiple-term SELECT command is a list of the number of records found for each term in the SELECT statement. The final set in the list displays the number of records that meet the SELECT statement criteria.

You can also use SELECT with EXPAND and SELECT with limit suffixes.