Advanced search...wtf

[Valpollicella]

Why have you got rid of the 'exclude' option

And the topic option?

It's less advanced than it was.

Oh, that's really annoying. I liked the topic bit.

Completely less advanced.

Why not make it more tailored to specific searches so you can search within quote marks or + sign

Ie bum + sex? Otherwise you still end up with every post containing bum, sex, or bum and sex

(sorry, bad example )

no Val - that was a fantastic example

and yes I agree it is no longer an "advanced" search - it's a very very basic search.

tis annoying and stupid

a retrograde step

C'mon then MNHQ, explanation pleeease?

Hello. And yes, sorry.

We were trying to line up Advanced Search on the mobile site with Advanced Search on the regular site - and, er, some bits got 'lost' in the changeover.

Choose Topics and exclude have now been put back and will go live as soon as we do the next code release.

And, Valpollicella, we are looking at the quote marks/+sign thing...

About how long will it be till the next code release? I am finding this quite annoying.

It is very annoying when you desperately wanted to search for something I agree!! When will it actually be re-instated then?

Oh good. Glad to hear it will be reinstated. And hooray for exact phrase search! :)

Oooh, if you're going to add the +sign searches then PLEASE (pretty please) can we have -sign searches too (i.e. exclude a word from the results).

To continue Vals example we could have bum +sex -rimming (to preserve my delicate disposition)

Purveyor, very good point

Is there an ordinary search too?

@PaperView: You can just use the "Include the words" box for your search query, and ignore the other fields, and it will behave as a simple search.

~D

Nice avoidance of our other requests Damian!

(What's with the ~D, not trying to convince us you are cute and fluffy are you?)

~ is the wiggly tail of a Daemon, PoWoo :)

(sorry, that could be a bit too geeky for some... )

Never apologise for being a geek

PoWoo - that's a new one. Better than 'Perv' which some people insist on

In linux / unix (and even hidden in those 'pretty' OSX Macs) ~username is a short-cut way to describe the 'home directory for username' (ie a directory path, much shorter to enter, and less prone to error than some description like /hda3/Users/NetGuy ... ~NetGuy means the same).

Daemons are background processes doing particular tasks, but sound like 'demons' so since we so often characterize a demon with a tail, I just used poetic licence to suggest it...

Best for me to make no comment on the 'given name' however as I don't want to be banished by the power of the Tech God :)

Thanks NG. I'm resisting the urge to say I did know that (have been a code monkey in the past), but my pride won't let me

but I guess other people won't have known it, so it was helpful - thanks

The name is ironic

Hi all,

Apologies for not answering properly earlier, it's been a bit of a rushed morning.

Search by topic and word exclusion is due to be re-added at some point soon, hopefully we won't need to keep you guys waiting too much longer for this to come in.

+words, -words and "exact search" are harder to implement, but there's a project on the boil that may make these a possibility in the future. Do watch this space.

Ah, I got stuck into Algol 60, COBOL, Fortran 66 (and Fortran IV before it) plus Pascal and some others (12 dialects of BASIC, PLAN [for ICL 1900 family], etc) but that was 25-30 years ago... Play with PHP, Perl, etc a bit now, plus MySQL, dBase, Access and sometimes Oracle.

That's what we like to see, 'elevenses' at 15:45, so you will be working until midnight or later, eh, DamianTech. like me :)