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 Performing Keyword Searches

Keyword searching is performed using the findme command, which is simply illustrated:

findme HTX

This command will search your documentation set for the string "HTX" and will then display a list of the documents found using your WWW browser, with each entry in the list being a hyper-link to the document in question. It is then a simple matter to follow the link to the document you want to read (in this example there will probably only be one document to choose from -- this one).

The way in which the findme command performs its search is explained in the next section, but in essence it attempts to find information about major topics quickly by searching only the main titles of documents. It then goes on to consider more detailed (and time consuming) searches only for more obscure topics that can't be found readily. The progress of the search is displayed on your terminal, so you can interrupt it if you fail to find what you want quickly and don't want to wait.

The more level of detail findme needs to consider, the more detailed will be the list of results it generates, with individual HTML pages being listed if appropriate. This strategy of performing progressively deeper searches can be observed if you ask for information on something a little more obscure, like:

findme findme

which makes findme search for information on itself, or even something very obscure, like:

findme HTX_PATH

which will (probably) only be found in the body of the text of this document.



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HTX Hypertext Cross-Reference Utilities
Starlink User Note 188
R.F. Warren-Smith
6th January 1998
E-mail:rfws@star.rl.ac.uk