Truncation or using Wildcards for searching with partial search terms

Wildcards can be used to construct queries with partial search terms.

Use an asterisk * to match any number of characters.

For example:

duoden*

matches duodenal, duodenectomy, and so on.

p*diatric

·matches pediatric, paediatric, and so on.

A question mark ? can be used to match 0 or any single character

For example:

l?st

matches last, lest, list, and so on.

200?

matches any years between 2000 and 2009

Important caveats to be aware of when using truncation

Wildcards cannot be added to the beginning of search terms, this generates an error.

Wildcards cannot be used in an expression enclosed with double quotes, our search engine ignores wildcards when quotes are used, and may give incorrect results.

For example, searching for

“p*diatric”

is equivalent to searching for

p diatric

Avoid excessive use of wildcards, as in some cases, using wildcards could affect performance of the platform.

For example, searching for

comp*

is more resource intensive than

comput*

because in the former there are more consecutive character variations to process.

Note that wildcards are not automatically stemmed.