FHSWSLCT - Form for Selecting Records to Process

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Text Search Options

The first character of a Surname, Given Name, Birth/Death Place string that has been entered into one of the search rules determines the type of search that will be performed as follows:

• If the first character of a Name/Place search request is not one of the special characters: "~", "^", "=" or "#" then a case dependent sub-string search is performed
• A "tilde" character, or "~", requests that a soundex search be performed; the string of characters following the "~" symbol will be called the "keyword" for the soundex search. During a soundex search, the "soundex code" for the keyword is computed and the corresponding Name or Place field is searched for words that have soundex codes that match it. The character strings that are examined are those that begin with the same "upper case" letter as the keyword soundex code and are terminated by a non-alpha character (such as spaces, commas, semi-colons, etc.). (NOTE: The tilde character is used in mathematics to indicate "similarity" which is why it was chosen to represent a search for similar sounding character strings)
• A "circumflex" or "^" character placed before a substring or soundex search extends that search to also look for substrings which begin with a lowercase letter but otherwise match the string or keyword soundex which follows the "^". Using this, you can find "similar sounding" strings of characters which are at the end of a name. For example a search for "^~Mary" would locate "Rosemarie"
• A double "circumflex" or "^^" before a soundex search request will extend the search further to locate similar sounding strings at the beginning or in the middle of a name. (NOTE: The circumflex was chosen to represent these extended search options because it is sometimes used to indicate the insertion of a character or string of characters in the middle of another string of characters)
• An "equal sign" or "=" character indicates that the search must produce an "exact match" to the following characters. In this case, a search of Given Name "=Mary" would not yield a match for "Mary Jane" or "Ida Mary", but only if the given name was simply "Mary"
• A "pound sign" or "#" character indicates that the search will be considered successful only if the search string that follows it does NOT result in a selection when the corresponding name or place field is searched. This might be called a "mismatch" search option. (NOTE: The "#" sign was chosen because it looks like a mathematical symbol for "not equal")

The following examples are intended to indicate what you might expect from using the above search options. The results were obtained by performing the indicated search against my own family file of 1750+ name records.

#	Search String	#Found	Typical Names found
1	Mary	40	Mary,Hester Mary
2	mary	1	Rosemary
3	^Mary	41	All in #1,#2
4	~Mary	66	Marie,Maria,Myra, as well as those in #1
5	^~Mary	77	Those in #4 as well as Rosemary and Tamara. I also picked up Elmer,Homer,Omar,Emera etc, but most of the "way out" variances were eliminated when I restricted the search to Females.
6	^^~Mary	165	After restricting the search to females the 88 additional names found over #5 above were reduced to 44, including: Marella, Meriam, Merrris, Marlene, Marvia, Marjorie, Myrtle, ...

A search for "#~Mary" applied to the selection set from #6 above will select just those 88 names that were found in #6 but not in #5. This shows how a "Mismatch" search can be used to reduce the results of previous searches.