Advanced Search Options

Apple's Search Kit supports multiple query types within a single search. For example, the following query includes Boolean, prefix, and suffix searching:

`appl* OR *ing'

This query will return documents containing words that begin with "appl" as well as documents that contain words that end with "ing". Note that BibDesk does not support phrase searching, since index creation is slower with that option.

The recognized query operators are:

Operator

Meaning

AND

Boolean AND

&

Boolean AND

<space>

Boolean AND by default when no other operator is present

OR

Boolean inclusive OR

|

Boolean inclusive OR

NO

Boolean NOT

!

Boolean NOT

*

Wildcard for prefix or suffix; surround term with wildcard characters for substring search (default in BibDesk)

(

Begin logical grouping

)

End logical grouping

The operators AND, OR, and NOT are case sensitive, but Search Kit normalizes query strings and indexes by stripping diacritical marks and by forcing characters to lowercase. For example, Search Kit normalizes each of the following characters to `a': `a', `à', `A', and `À'. For more information, see SKSearchCreate developer documentation.