Overview

SearchVista features a robust recursive-descent query parser inspired by classic early-web search infrastructure. By utilizing logical operators, explicit forcing modifiers, phrases, and exclusions, you can target specific documents across distributed shard networks with maximum efficiency.

Query Operators & Syntax

1. Implicit AND (Multi-Term Search)

By default, providing multiple words without explicit operators acts as a logical AND match. All individual words must appear within a document for it to score as a matching hit.

Example: distributed software database
Finds pages containing "distributed", "software", and "database".

2. Forced Requirement (+ Modifier)

Prepend a + symbol directly to a term to mark it as strictly required. This forces the matching engine to flag it with the QF_FORCE option, preventing the engine from relaxing your query into an alternative "best-effort" OR fallback mode if hits are sparse.

Example: retro computing +posdb
Ensures that "posdb" must be present in every single result returned, disabling OR-fallback loops.

3. Term Exclusion (- Modifier)

Prepend a - symbol directly to a word to completely remove documents containing that word from the results page (maps internally to the QF_NEG mask filter).

Example: operating systems -bloat -windows
Finds pages discussing operating systems, but purges any document mentioning "bloat" or "windows".

4. Exact Phrases ("...")

Enclose sequences inside quotation marks to search for exact contiguous matching patterns. Unlike standard searches, phrase sequences include stop words (e.g., "the", "of", "and") since they are preserved within the main document index positions.

Example: "the fastest search engine on the web"
Matches the exact sequence of terms consecutively.

5. Explicit OR Groups & Parentheses

You can build grouped query conditions using parentheses and the uppercase OR keyword. A document satisfies the criteria if it matches all top-level requirements along with at least one matching term from the OR cluster.

Example: operating system (unix OR bsd OR linux)
Matches documents about operating systems that mention at least one of the three specified kernels.

Underlying Engine Safeguards & Rank Tuning