Search should show partial-word results

[Danielsan 5]

I searched all over and couldn't find mention of this. I can't believe I'm the first one to get burned by it.

I have a recipe for "cornmeal madeleines". I do a search for intitle:corn. No results. This is rather surprising since, quite clearly, the title contains the word "corn". Okay, I search for intitle:maddel (because, yes, I can rarely spell it correctly twice in a row). No results. I conclude, then, that the note is gone, so I recreate it from my various notes.

Then I realize that I KNOW it exists. I added a * at the end of corn and, voila, it shows up.

Seems to me, default behavior should match the "contains" specification. Maybe I want wholeword:corn and cornbread, corndogs, and cornmeal would NOT show up in the results, but the current behavior isn't... good.

[jefito 5,589]

On 5/17/2019 at 2:19 PM, Danielsan said:

I searched all over and couldn't find mention of this.

Search grammar reference is here: https://dev.evernote.com/doc/articles/search_grammar.php. I'm pretty sure that this is what is used on the Evernote back-end, however, individual Evernote clients can add a trailing wildcard ('*') behind the scenes to make searches be prefix searches rather than exact searches. This can be confusing, sometimes, unless you're aware of it. You can make it exact by quoting it, e.g. "corn" vs. corn

 

[DTLow 5,736]

On 5/17/2019 at 11:19 AM, Danielsan said:

Seems to me, default behavior should match the "contains" specification.

Warning: The search feature supports words beginning with, not contains

Using my iPad, search Fri returned all text beginning with Fri, such as Friday
Search intitle matched your results,  intitle:Fri returned no text    intitle:Fri* was successful

I'm comfortable using the wildcard characters

 

 

[CalS 5,280]

23 hours ago, Danielsan said:

I searched all over and couldn't find mention of this. I can't believe I'm the first one to get burned by it.

I have a recipe for "cornmeal madeleines". I do a search for intitle:corn. No results. This is rather surprising since, quite clearly, the title contains the word "corn". Okay, I search for intitle:maddel (because, yes, I can rarely spell it correctly twice in a row). No results. I conclude, then, that the note is gone, so I recreate it from my various notes.

Then I realize that I KNOW it exists. I added a * at the end of corn and, voila, it shows up.

Seems to me, default behavior should match the "contains" specification. Maybe I want wholeword:corn and cornbread, corndogs, and cornmeal would NOT show up in the results, but the current behavior isn't... good.

  If you search for corn the note will be in the search results.  For whatever reason the intitle search is a specific match (the wildcard made it specific to anything starting with corn versus corn only) versus the general search which is anything starting with corn.

[Danielsan 5]

On 5/17/2019 at 2:44 PM, DTLow said:

Warning: The search feature supports words beginning with, not contains

Using my iPad, search Fri returned all text beginning with Fri, such as Friday
Search intitle matched your results,  intitle:Fri returned no text    intitle:Fri* was successful

I'm comfortable using the wildcard characters

 

 

While you may be comfortable using wildcard characters, this goes against a half-dozen usability commandments.

First, it's not expected behavior ESPECIALLY since it differs from the search mechanism for the contents of a note.

Second, while a large number of Evernote users are probably technically savvy, there are plenty that aren't. Failing to find a note because you typed something "wrong" in a search bar blames the user and when it yields no results, it creates a trust issue with the application. The quickest way to get me to leave a platform is to make me feel you it can't reliably hold on to my data.

Third, any feature that is prefaced with the word "warning" is clearly an issue. Let me use wildcard characters (hell, let me use regex expressions if I feel like it), but don't make it a requirement in order to achieve expected behavior.

[Danielsan 5]

1 hour ago, jefito said:

Search grammar reference is here: https://dev.evernote.com/doc/articles/search_grammar.php. I'm pretty sure that this is what is used on the Evernote back-end, however, individual Evernote clients can add a trailing wildcard ('*') behind the scenes to make searches be prefix searches rather than exact searches. This can be confusing, sometimes, unless you're aware of it. You can make it exact by quoting it, e.g. "corn" vs. corn

 

I think that last example is what is expected behavior. intitle should do a partial search while intitle:"corn" should only find the whole word corn. This is bad UI.

[jefito 5,589]

2 hours ago, Danielsan said:

I think that last example is what is expected behavior. intitle should do a partial search while intitle:"corn" should only find the whole word corn. This is bad UI.

I found it mildly bothersome a while ago when I found out that the Windows search is different than the search used on the server, but I prefer the behavior of the of the implied wildcard, so I got over it pretty quickly. I can always do find-exact searches if I need that. 

Beyond that, I'd be OK with a 'strict' search mode/setting that implements exactly what the search grammar specifies, though I find the relaxed version more useful in general. Or possibly a tunable list of search preferences (e.g. [ ] Use exact search for titles, [ ] Use exact search for text, etc.). But it's not a huge deal either way; I can do find-exact easily enough, or just as easily add my own wildcards

[jefito 5,589]

3 hours ago, Danielsan said:

First, it's not expected behavior ESPECIALLY since it differs from the search mechanism for the contents of a note.

I can tell you from 10+ years in these forums, that vanishingly small numbers of people actually find, read and understand the search grammar rules. Mostly they find out what works for the Evernote clients they use, and go from there. So expectation are lees of an issue than previous use experiences. There are plenty of software applications that do partial searched by default.

3 hours ago, Danielsan said:

Second, while a large number of Evernote users are probably technically savvy, there are plenty that aren't. Failing to find a note because you typed something "wrong" in a search bar blames the user and when it yields no results, it creates a trust issue with the application. The quickest way to get me to leave a platform is to make me feel you it can't reliably hold on to my data.

Um, 'holding on to' your data is not the same thing as searching it. If you know the rules (whether or not they meet your expectations), you can search effectively (modulo regex, full Boolean filters, infix search, etc.).

3 hours ago, Danielsan said:

Third, any feature that is prefaced with the word "warning" is clearly an issue. Let me use wildcard characters (hell, let me use regex expressions if I feel like it), but don't make it a requirement in order to achieve expected behavior.

Bit of a false issue there: the 'warning'  termthere is not from Evernote; term. You won't find it in their documentation.

3 hours ago, Danielsan said:

While you may be comfortable using wildcard characters, this goes against a half-dozen usability commandments.

ITYM "quarter-dozen"??