Proximity operators - proximity operations (Creighton University Health Sciences Library)

Description

NEAR restricts both terms to the same sentence.

The NEAR operation retrieves a subset of records which would be retrieved by the AND Boolean operation.

In this first diagram the blue shading represents records were the search terms occur together in the same sentence at least once. The grey shading represents records which contain both search terms, but never together in the same sentence.

Counting distances between words
for the NEAR# operator:

Counting

the is one word from see (near1)
dog is two words from see (near2)
run is three words from see (near3)
fast is four words from see (near4)

NEAR# (where # is a whole number > 0) requires terms to be no father apart than the number indicates; however, they may be closer together.

NEAR1 requires terms to be adjacent: calcium absorption

NEAR2 permits no more than one intervening word: absorption of calcium

Examples:

absorption near2 calcium will retrieve the phrases:
	"calcium absorption" "absorption of calcium"

absorption near1 calcium will only retrieve the phrase:
	"calcium absorption"

WARNING:
In WebSPIRS NEAR1 is the default operator. If you don't combine terms with a Boolean or proximity operator, the terms must be adjacent in any records retrieved.

For example searching patient information rather than patient AND information or patient NEAR information would not retrieve records containing these phrases:

"patient drug information"
"patient discharge information"

if the terms were not adjacent anywhere else in the record.

Other Proximity Operators

WITH	The WITH operator restricts both terms to the same field. WITH is less restrictive than NEAR.

ADJ	The ADJ operator requires terms to be adjacent in the order specified.