<html>
<title>Archie Help</title>
<center><h2>Archie Help</h2></center>
<blockquote>This help file explains in moderate detail what each field in the search page
means. If you still can't locate the help you need or you want to report an
error please mail us at <i><A
HREF="mailto:archie-group@bunyip.com">archie-group@bunyip.com</A></i> and we
will get back to you as soon as we can.
</blockquote>
<hr>
<br>
<b>Search For:</b>
<blockquote>
Here you type in the search variable. If regular expression is the type of
search you are using then the string would be the
<A HREF="archie-help.html#regex" REL="SUBDOCUMENT">regular expression</A> you are
looking for.
</blockquote>
<b>Database:</b>
<blockquote>
The database which will be undergoing the search. If you are searching the
web then press on the <i>Web Index</i> button. Otherwise if you are searching
the FTP sites then press on the other button.
</blockquote>
<b>Search Type:</b>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><b>Exact: </b>
<li><b>Sub String: </b><br>
<i>Substring (case insensitive)</i>: A match occurs if
the file (or directory) name in the database contains
the user-given substring, without regard to case.
<pre>
Example:
The pattern:
is
matches any of the following:
islington
this
poison
</pre>
<i>Substring (case sensitive):</i> As above, but taking case as significant.
<pre>
Example:
The pattern:
TeX
will match:
LaTeX
but neither of the following:
Latex
TExTroff
</pre>
<li><b><A NAME="regex" REL="SUBDOCUMENT">Regular Expression</A>: </b>
Regular expressions follow the conventions of the ed(1) command,
allowing sophisticated pattern matching. Regular expressions imbue
certain characters with special meaning, providing a quoting mechanism to remove
this special meaning when required.
</ul>
</blockquote>
<b>Case: </b>
<blockquote>
This option only affects searches of type Regular Expression and Substring.
</blockquote>
<b>Output Format: </b>
<blockquote>
This controls the output format for results from the Web Index database.
<ul>
<li><b>Keywords Only</b>: The most frequently occurring Keywords in each document will
be displayed after the document's URL.
<li><b>Excerpts Only</b>: A short excerpt from each document is displayed
after its URL.
<li><b>Links Only</b>: Only links are displayed with no further details. No excerpts
or Keywords are displayed with each URL.
</ul>
</blockquote>
<h3>Optional Parameters</h3>
<ul>
<li><b>Path restriction or exclusion: </b>Several parameters could be used to
improve your search results. But first you must specify what type of operation
to be used on those upcoming fields. If you specify <b>OR</b> then you ask
that the strings you provide in these fields have an OR relationship among
them. Otherwise if you specify <b>AND</b> then you are asking for all the
strings that you provide in these fields to be considered.
<ul>
<li><b>Path Restriction</b> : You can improve the results by restricting on
the path of each URL that comes back. The strings you provide in these field
will be matched against the paths returned in the result and paths that do not
contain these strings will be disregarded. If you have chosen the <b>OR</b>
as your operator among the strings then if any of the strings occur in a path
this path will be considered valid. However if you have chosen <b>AND</b> as
your operator then unless all the entered strings appear in the path, the path
is invalid.
<li><b>Path Exclusion</b> : You can exclude certain results from coming back
if they contain a specific string you don't need to see. By specifying this
string in this field you will achieve your goal.
</ul>
<li><b>Domains: </b> This variable allows you to restrict the scope of
your search based upon the Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDN) of the
anonymous FTP or Web sites being searched. In this way, you can specify a
list of domain names to which all returned sites must match.
<li><b>Maximum Hits :</b> Allows Archie to generate at most the
specified number of matches (permissible range: 0-200; default: 100).
<li><b>Maximum Hits Per Match :</b> Across all the anonymous FTP and
Web archives on the Internet (and even on one single anonymous FTP archive) many
files will have the same name. For example, if you
search for a very common filename like "README" you can
get hundreds even thousands of matches. You can limit
the number of files with the same name through this variable.
<li><b>Maximum Match :</b> This variable will limit the number filenames (or
strings matched) returned.
For example, if maxmatch is set to 2 and you perform a
substring search for the string "etc", and the database
contains filenames "etca", "betc" and "detc" only the
filenames "etca" and "betc" will be returned. However,
depending on the values of maxhitspm and maxhits you
will get back a number of actual files with those
names.
</ul>
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