Editing Help:Searching (section)

==== Logical operators ====
{{shortcut|H:BOOLEAN|H:LOPS}}

The search engine supports {{em|limited}} boolean logic in searches. [[Negation|Logical NOT (negation)]] can be indicated by a "{{kbd|-}}" (minus sign) or a "{{kbd|!}}" (exclamation point) character prefixed to a search term, or by the {{kbd|NOT}} keyword.

Parentheses {{kbd|(…)}} are ignored by the search engine and have no effect.

Search terms are implicitly joined by [[Logical conjunction|logical AND (conjunction)]]. For example {{kbd|"credit card" housecat}} searches for pages containing both "credit card" and "housecat". An {{kbd|OR}} operator is supported, but will only give intuitive results (corresponding to [[logical disjunction]]) if ''all'' search terms are separated by {{kbd|OR}} (e.g. {{kbd|red OR green OR blue}} has the expected behaviour, but {{kbd|red OR green blue}} does not). {{kbd|OR}} also does not behave predictably with special keywords (like <code>intitle:</code>) or namespaces. {{crossref|pw=y|(See [[:mw:Help:CirrusSearch/Logical operators]] for a more detailed explanation.)}}