All of Alamy

[Bryan]

AoA is a great resource, but would be even more useful if the search tools were a little more sophisticated.

 

I know the secret of the % sign, maybe there are other clever tricks that are not obvious, at least to me?

 

It would be useful to search for whole words only, or to indicate terms that are not wanted in the search. Simple boolean logic would be good AND NOT or whatever. e.g. search for Boston, but not the one in the UK etc so Boston AND USA

 

Not top priority I confess, but is there any chance of an upgrade?

[wiskerke]

If %dress% gives you address,

try

dress%

and

% dress%.

If it gives you dressing,

try

%dress %

Nothing you can do about dress/dressing as the last word of the search though.

Underscore acts like a % for 1 character:

a_dress will give you a dress; address and andress.

 

wim

[wiskerke]

b[a-z]d will find bad; bbd; bcd; bdd; bed; bfd etc.

So b[a-e]d will find bad; bbd; bcd; bdd; bed but not bfd till bzd.

 

Interesting. Never thought to go looking for those. Not sure if I would ever need anything beyond % though.

Anyone working with databases will probably know a ton of those.

 

wim

[wiskerke]

w[^ae]ll will find will but not wall and well.

 

Wow.

 

wim

 

edit: it will find woll and wull too.

As in wolly socks and Wullersleben Triptych.

Sorry I didn't look beyond page 2 out of 20 ;-)

[wiskerke]

w[ae]ll will find wall and well but not will.

 

This is fun.

- turns from blackboard and notices empty classroom ;-)

 

wim

[Bryan]

Interesting, thanks Wim!

 

Not sure it gives me what I want however