Free Republic Search Engine *Experimental*

Search Free Republic ^

[doug from upland]

Try, SONG PARODY: Camp Grenada

[AgThorn]

looks good. Shouldn't order by posttime default to descending order though, i.e. most current first? just curious.

[RonDog]

song parody you - and three letter words - at least "you" - now seem to work, too!

Besides "you", it appears that some small words DO work as secondary search terms:

song parody abc - finds "ABC" in the sub-title of an OLD thread:

Topic: DOUG FROM UPLAND - Song Parodies

SONG PARODY: If You're Happy (well, NBC, ABC, CBS?)

Bringing Entertainment, News and Truth (BENT)
6-99 Lyrics, Doug from Upland
...
...
Posted by: doug from upland
1 06/01/1999 07:38:58 PDT

song parody new - finds a BUNCH of threads with "new" in the title (plus "knew, news", etc.)
song parody all - finds threads with "all" in the title (plus "call, callahan, ball, ballad", etc.)
- and even -
song parody the - finds MANY threads with "the" in the title (plus "they, them, another", etc.)

- but by themselves:

new - finds nothing
all - finds nothing
the - finds nothing

[Illbay]

Well, it seems to work okay, but what we REALLY need are "Advanced Search" functions so we can pinpoint a date or search over a range of dates, use the keyword field, and other "focused field" searches. Yeah, I know it's a tall order but aren't there some HTML-based search engines available free or at little cost that could be adapted?

[RonDog]

Try, SONG PARODY: Camp Grenada

song parody camp grenada

Sounds like you REALLY like that melody!

(ONE MORE, and it will be an even TWO DOZEN!)

[John Robinson]

Well, this search engine is a hybrid. The workhorse is the FULLTEXT index facility included with recent versions of MySQL, this workhorse ignores three-letter words. If you give the workhorse only three-letter words, it will return nothing. However, if you give the workhorse something it can find, like "song" and "parody" and use "match all" or "match exact", my code will further restrict what the workhorse finds-- it takes the results from the workhorse and then filters them again. So if you are looking for "song", "parody", and "you", the workhorse ignores "you", finds many records with "song" and/or "parody", gives those results to my code, which then makes sure each has "song" AND "parody" AND "you".

And my code is not invoked if you do a "match any"; so "match any" will never find a three-letter word.

This might sound amazingly complicated, but it really isn't that much code. :-)

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

~~~ The Sailboat Escape-Pod Option ~~~

Here's an interesting problem, John. I looked up my favorite thread, listed above. I looked up the word pod, thinking it would bring the article right up. Using the three options, nothing at all came up. It might have to do with the hyphen before the word pod.

I then looked up escape-pod, using lower case letters. It was the 39th article listed, even though it was the only thread with the exact phrase in the title. Same result when searching it as Escape-Pod. The only thing that brought up the thread, and listed it first, was using the phrase escape-pod option, in lower case, as well as upper & lower case.

[RonDog]

Well, this search engine is a hybrid.
The workhorse is the FULLTEXT index facility included with recent versions of MySQL, this workhorse ignores three-letter words. If you give the workhorse only three-letter words, it will return nothing.

However, if you give the workhorse something it can find, like "song" and "parody" and use "match all" or "match exact", my code will further restrict what the workhorse finds-- it takes the results from the workhorse and then filters them again. So if you are looking for "song", "parody", and "you", the workhorse ignores "you", finds many records with "song" and/or "parody", gives those results to my code, which then makes sure each has "song" AND "parody" AND "you".

And my code is not invoked if you do a "match any"; so "match any" will never find a three-letter word.

This might sound amazingly complicated, but it really isn't that much code. :-)

I see. So a "work-around" for the "ignore three-letter words" problem is to include in the search SOMETHING ELSE, which is longer than four characters, like:

fbi files - rather than just FBI
irs taxes - rather than just IRS
fox news - rather than just FOX
freep cnn - rather than just CNN

Also, FOUR-letter words - by themselves - seem to be O.K.:

waco
news
gore

[RonDog]

...I then looked up escape-pod, using lower case letters. It was the 39th article listed, even though it was the only thread with the exact phrase in the title. Same result when searching it as Escape-Pod. The only thing that brought up the thread, and listed it first, was using the phrase escape-pod option, in lower case, as well as upper & lower case.

There are THREE MODES to John's search engine:

match ANY word
match ALL words
match EXACT PHRASE

escape pod - match ANY word - either escape OR pod, MANY results with "escape" but not "pod"
escape pod - match ALL words - only ONE result:

~~~ The Sailboat Escape-Pod Option ~~~
www.sit-rep.com | March 16, 2001 | Travis McGee

Note:

escape pod - match EXACT PHRASE - NO results (missing the hyphen)
escape-pod - match EXACT PHRASE - NO results

[WIMom]

I was thinking the same. Would "FBI" or FBI- be a valid search? A rule could be posted that a 3 letter key acronym word must be in "" to be included in a valid search.

[RonDog]

My previous post to Doug from Upland applies to YOUR wonderful archive threads as well:

Perhaps the REST of us can learn from your example.
(At least until, if ever, John is able to let us search beyond the title.)
Since it currently only looks in the title, you are fortunate that YOUR threads have been effectively titled

Search for essay winners are - match ALL words - order by post time

finds threads from November 23, 2001

Essay Winners Are: RightOnline, Publius, nicmarlo, Drammach, oldfart, & Dahoser

Constitution/Conservatism
Source: Free Republic Highlights
Published: November 23, 2001 Author: RJayneJ
Posted on 11/22/01 11:42 PM Pacific by RJayneJ

all the way back to March 19, 1999

Topic: White Water

The Essay Of The Week winners are Moshe A. Levi, l0newolf, Doug from Upland, Congressman Billybob, Paul Cruce

Vanity
March 19, 1999 Jayne Johnson

JohnRob's new search engine also seems to find MANY of the ones in between.

Can you tell if any of them are missing?
Did you use the same words in the TITLE every time?

[RonDog]

Would "FBI" or FBI- be a valid search? A rule could be posted that a 3 letter key acronym word must be in "" to be included in a valid search.

I tried every variation of NON-alphabetic fourth characters that I could think of, and only had PARTIAL success with:

'fbi - single quote preceding - SIX results
fbi' - single quote following - ONE result

The simplest way still seems to be, to include another four-letter (or longer) word WITH the three-letter word, i.e. FBI.

[WIMom]

Right now, we aren't typing "FBI" in our titles, just FBI. If "FBI" was typed as part of the title, would a search produce a result?

[nicmarlo]

Thanks for the ping.

[Lazamataz]

Your new mail program ROCKS. My mail bin is huge -- so many messages I have saved -- and the ability to search by user is really cool. Nice job!

[IM2Phat4U]

bump

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

~~~ The Sailboat Escape-Pod Option ~~~

I tried various options & combinations, even more than I listed. However, in order for the new Search Engine to be truly useful, a thread should come up by searching just one word, in this case pod. Sometimes you can only remember one word of a title. What if I am unable to remember the phrase escape pod?

[steveegg]

There's a slight problem with self-search now. The "no-text" option works, but if you want to look at the articles from the self-search screen in IE, all that pops up is a massively-wide blank area where the article should be, and the background specified in the style sheet doesn't show up. The text does show up in Mozilla, but not my background. FYI, my current style sheet is http://www.eggstor.com/FR_CSS/NS61beta.txt

[RonDog]

escape pod - match EXACT PHRASE - NO results (missing the hyphen)
escape-pod - match EXACT PHRASE - NO results

Whoops! The last part of my previous post (#109) SHOULD have read:

escape pod - match EXACT PHRASE - NO results (missing the hyphen); i.e., not an EXACT match, but
escape-pod - match EXACT PHRASE - this DOES find the thread that you are looking for:

7.5: ~~~ The Sailboat Escape-Pod Option ~~~
www.sit-rep.com | March 16, 2001 | Travis McGee