Cozy Builders Mail Search Help

Introduction

The Cozy Builders Mailing List Archive search allows you to perform simple and complex searches through the messages posted to the mailing list. The database is updated each night with the previous days messages.

The database maintains the original message text, the sender, the date, and the message subject. Any combination of these may be specified in your search.

Keyword Searching

The most common type of search will be a keyword search in the message body. For example, lets say you wanted to find all messages about peel ply. If you entered peel ply in the keyword entry and pressed the Search button, you would be presented will all messages that contained the words peel and ply. The search is only against the body of the message. If the word is in the subject but not the body then the message will not match.

You may enter any number of keywords. There is an implied and placed between each word. If you prefer to search for messages that contain word one or word two then enter the two keywords with or between them.

You may also search for messages that dont contain a certain word. Lets say you want to find all message that contain the word epoxy but not the word resin. You would enter this as:
epoxy and not resin.

You can combine many words with and, or, and not. Parentheses can be used to group complex expressions. An example could be:
(stiffener or rib) and (ip or (instrument and panel))

The search has some basic knowledge of the English language. If you search on the word sand, you will get matches for any messages containing the words sand, sanding, sanded, sander, or sands.

Besides handling various forms of words, all hyphens and apostrophes have been removed. This way you do not need to worry about how words were entered in various messages.

Keep in mind that spelling mistakes are another story. If you search on fuselage, dont expect to find messages containing typos such as fuslage or the like. This is a good reason to spell check your email before sending it.

Phrase Searching

If you are looking for a very specific phrase within the body of a message you may search on it by entering the phrase in double quotes ("). An example might be "wood to wood". This would (no pun intended) find all messages that contained the exact phrase wood to wood in it. Other word forms are not checked like with keyword searching.

You may combine phrase searching with keyword searching by simply combining then with and or or. An example might be longeron and "90 degree corner". This would find all messages with variations of the word longeron and the phrase 90 degree corner.

The phrase search is very slow if you do not combine it with at least one keyword. The slowness comes from the ability to do phrase matching across multiple lines. If you do a phrase search without a keyword please be patient.

Date Searching

You may limit your searches to a certain date range. If the Start Date is left blank then the search will go back to the very first message. If the End Date is left blank then the search will go all the way to the latest messages. The dates are inclusive. This means messages will be included for the specified date.

From and Subject Searching

Since the From and Subject fields are short and it wont be common to search on them anyway, the search method is different. Both fields work the same. In its simplest form these use a basic substring match. For example, if you enter the text epoxy in the Subject field then any message that contains that text in its subject will match. As with keywords, the match is case insensitive. Better yet, lets say you want to find all messages you have ever sent. Simply enter your name in the From field.

In reality the search is much more complex. You can enter any extended regular expression. Unless you work on computers using UNIX you may not have any idea what a regular expression is. If you dont know then dont worry about it. Just type simple text you wish to match on and things will work.

For the technically curious this search is performed using a MySQL database and the REGEXP function. You may read details on the specifics.

Sorting

You may specify how to sort the results. The choices are by date, subject, or from. The results will have a little arrow next to the column indicating how the results are being sorted. Clicking on a column header in the results list will cause the results to be resorted on the selected column. If the results are already being sorted on that column then the sort will be reversed.

Results Per Page

The number of results displayed per page can be specified. Simply select the desired value from the list. The choices include 10, 25, or 50 rows per page.