(Archived) Search and Underscore _

[SietseVoorhorst 0]

I have tried to find some information about the use of the underscore (_). There seems to be a lot of discussion about it, in which way to use it. I understand it is treated as a letter.

However, in the new Mac Desktop Client (Versie 5.0.5 (400808)) it acts kind of weird. It ignores everything with a underscore. I use a unique code for my invoices to match them with my accounting software. However, if I can't use the search function anymore, I have to find a solution for a couple of years of invoices, a big issue. Even if I copy/paste this code from the note into the search box, it doesn't show up.

Luckily, it still works properly in the web based version of Evernote.

Anyone have the same problems? Is a solution available? Or is it something that will be fixed after the update?

[skkippy 12]

I think there's something screwy with the Mac search. It behaves differently than the official search grammar. As if they were invoking some other search tool. Two examples:

1) I had ongoing trouble with title texts like 'abc [def]' in which the string 'abc' was found, but the string 'def' wasn't. I had assumed the '[' would be treated as punctuation, but perhaps not.

2) The word 'to' is ignored on my Mac searches, but not on IOS searches, as in

intitle:"to read"

which - only on the Mac - returns results without the word 'to'. I think somewhere on the Mac 'to' is being treated as a noise word.

I submitted bug reports on both these behaviors. It's maddening to get different results on different platforms.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Hi. I haven't played around much with underscore myself, and generally avoid punctuation in titles, especially at the beginning of words. Thanks for reporting the problem. Reporting these things is the first step towards getting them fixed. There shouldn't be any differences among the clients, but unfortunately, there are still a lot of issues to sort out (). That said, Evernote still has the best search out there for cloud services (in my opinion), but there is certainly room for improvement.

[jefito 5,589]

That said, Evernote still has the best search out there for cloud services (in my opinion), but there is certainly room for improvement.

Um, Google does it pretty well, I think.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

That said, Evernote still has the best search out there for cloud services (in my opinion), but there is certainly room for improvement.

Um, Google does it pretty well, I think.

Cloud-based brains. Happy now?

Actually, Google does a pretty poor job of handling PDFs in Google Drive, for example, and also mines my data in the process. In contrast, Evernote does a great job and leaves my stuff alone. If I had to choose between the two, I'd go for Evernote. That's "the best" for me

[SietseVoorhorst 0]

The weird thing is that it used to work fine in older versions, that why I designed my system like this. I need a unique code for every invoice. It has to play nice with both evernote and my accounting software.

On the web based version of evernote, everything works just fine.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

The last I knew, "words" are defined as a sequence of numbers, letters & the underscore. Everything else is a delimiter. So if you have a note with "abcdef", a note with "abc_def" and another note with "abc[def", searching on "def" will only bring up the last instance.

If you have a note titled "I have read these books" and another note titled "I want to read these books", searching on intitle:"to read" should find the second note & only find the second note (not the first one).

If the Mac client is not functioning this way, it would be a bug & you should open a support ticket.

[skkippy 12]

HI Burgers & Fries,

I dispair of some of these query anomalies. My bug report on the <intitle...> problem was in Jun 2009, when I was told by support: "We are aware of the search bug in Mac and are working for a fix". It still isn't fixed 3 1/2 years later - case 254172 for anybody who can search these things.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

HI Burgers & Fries,

I dispair of some of these query anomalies. My bug report on the <intitle...> problem was in Jun 2009, when I was told by support: "We are aware of the search bug in Mac and are working for a fix". It still isn't fixed 3 1/2 years later - case 254172 for anybody who can search these things.

Hi. Could you tell us what the bug report was? The only intitle problem I have seen you report (perhaps I missed it) was the inability to find intitle:"to read", but it works for me on the Mac, so is there something else that has not been fixed?

By the way, by "works" I mean to say that it finds all instances of "to read" but curiously also finds instances of just "read", so it isn't performing quite as I would expect (only finding the phrase in quotation marks), but it is finding "to", which was your problem earlier in the thread.

[skkippy 12]

Hi Grumpy,

We're seeing exactly the same thing, to wit, on mac v5: intitle:"to read" returns the same records as intitle:"read". I say it's ignoring the "to", you prefer to say it's finding the "to" and also 'curiously finds other instances...'.

The original submission was - due to screwups with AT&T handling of support replies - titled <(Case 254172) [Premium] Premium Support inquiry not acknowledged>

A second submission in Feb 2012 was <Ticket #16051-67448 search returns too many results>

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Hi Grumpy,

We're seeing exactly the same thing, to wit, on mac v5: intitle:"to read" returns the same records as intitle:"read". I say it's ignoring the "to", you prefer to say it's finding the "to" and also 'curiously finds other instances...'.

The original submission was - due to screwups with AT&T handling of support replies - titled <(Case 254172) [Premium] Premium Support inquiry not acknowledged>

A second submission in Feb 2012 was <Ticket #16051-67448 search returns too many results>

I think your way of saying it is more accurate. My guess is that a preposition or other part of speech at the beginning of a quoted phrase is ignored. That's why "books I want to read" works, but "to read" doesn't. There are also some discrepancies between the Mac and Web interfaces. I have contacted support, and we'll see if I can get an answer for us about what is happening. At any rate, whether bug or expected behavior, it doesn't seem to be documented (http://dev.evernote.com/documentation/cloud/chapters/search_grammar.php), so hopefully we can work this out.

[skkippy 12]

Hi Grumpy,

 

You're onto exactly what freaked me out - the implementation sounds like a rogue - it may be smart to ignore leading little prepositions, but it violates the published search grammar.  

 

To my mind, when you publish a search grammar, you're committing to it.

 

It's the search grammar that plays into the original poster's underscore problem.  I've never seen a definition of exactly what <Words in the content of the note are split by whitespace or punctuation> means.  Is a bracket punctuation?  An underscore?  Or is it only the things we were taught in elementary school, periods, commas, question marks and such?  With 35 million users, somebody is relying on damn near every edge case. It would be nice to know.

[skkippy 12]

I wrote the last too quickly.  The search grammar Grumpy pointed to does completely define what a wordchar is.  I didn't look far enough.  Here's a fragment

 

wordchar = ? any Unicode Letter or Number (Unicode character classes L and N) or underscore '_' ? ;

 

Unfortunately, I don't understand the formalism.