Is it possible to restrict searches to whole words?

cpsyctc · July 28, 2019

I think the answer is "no" but I can't seem to find definitive confirmation anywhere. To give a concrete example of what I mean, I just wanted to find some papers I know I have in Zotero that touch on the idea of "emic" and "etic" but when I try to search for these I don't seem to be able to get rid of "systemic" and "synthetic" (for example) and what I want is completely lost in false positive hits. Am I missing something? TIA, Chris

bwiernik · July 29, 2019

If you search in quotes with a space before these words “ emic” and “ etic”, you will capture only words with those letters at the beginning. This will capture everything except papers with those as the first word of the title.

cpsyctc · July 29, 2019

Aha. Stupidly, I thought of that but didn't try it and it works as you say but it won't catch the word being used as a single word or a starting word in a keyword. That's a real help and step forward but I think a "whole word" qualifier that worked properly, i.e. picked up first words and single word keywords would be a genuinely useful addition to Zotero.

dstillman · July 29, 2019

it won't catch the word being used as a single word or a starting word in a keyword

Sorry, what do you mean by that?

bwiernik · July 29, 2019

They mean that searching with a quoted space won't capture an that starts with the keyword (i.e., " emic" won't capture the title "Emic approaches to personality measurement"), or titles containing only one word.

dstillman · July 29, 2019

Sure it will. Why wouldn't it?

dstillman · July 29, 2019

Oh, sorry, I missed the "quoted space" part.

dstillman · July 29, 2019

You could find "Emic approaches to personality measurement" with "emic " (space at the end), of course. For a single-word match, you'd have to use the "is" operator in an advanced search and search on specific fields.

cpsyctc · July 29, 2019

Aha "is" is exactly what I needed: perfect. Thanks.

grahamperrin · 2025-04-06T10:09:08+00:00

Re: How to search for exact phrase in all pdfs

For attachment content, the options are:

contains
does not contain

– take one of those two options, then use the disclosure triangle in the adjacent field to reveal regexp menu options:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u9523/usjtryzhqvhtmnuy8zm1.png

If regular expressions are new to you, try the first three links under https://gist.github.com/grahamperrin/7b898d5d035a9470b2314b371c09119d#references

HTH